Startup interview: Marco Nardone, CEO and Founder, Wineapp
RTIH gets the lowdown on UK-based rapid wine delivery service Wineapp.
RTIH: Tell us about yourself and Wineapp
MN: I founded Wineapp in late 2018 with a singular vision - to disrupt the wine delivery market and the way we access fine wine at home.
My team and I have been working together on this for the better part of a decade and our developers are all entrepreneurs who’ve previously run their own businesses.
Together, we brought Wineapp out of beta in February 2019, long before the pandemic hit, predicting that the world would one day move to an on-demand habitual lifestyle, where society would choose to have items brought to them over traditional shopping excursions.
We chose the wine market as nobody else was taking on the challenge of deciphering complex wine terminology for the average consumer, as well as delivering it fast (and chilled) by the bottle.
To this day, there is no other app that offers such a wide range of fine wines to hundreds of thousands of customers every day.
Later that year, our vision to create a unique wine bar that takes an innovative approach to service using the app and combining it with the physical restaurant experience, came to life.
We used the technology that made Wineapp a success and opened our first physical wine bar in Shanghai that utilises technology in a new way.
It was recently awarded “Best Wine Restaurant In Asia”, beating well known names like Hakkasan. We’re really proud of its success, so we are now preparing to bring it to the UK.
We now have over 800 products in the Wineapp portfolio which is growing every month. Last week, for example, we added 17 bottles from the UK's top producer Chapel Down.
Dedicated to supporting local businesses, we now stand as the holder of the biggest on-demand English wine portfolio.
Since our launch in 2019, we have become the UK’s largest on-demand fine wine delivery app, delivering 280,000 bottles to its 130,000 users, 81% of whom are return customers.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the brand up?
MN: Our vision from the offset has been to evolve the way people access and drink good wine.
On-demand delivery until midnight means you don’t need to prepare to enjoy a bottle on the sofa at home, and with a huge portfolio, Wineapp users have choice which is certainly not limited.
The real beauty, however, is in the education - we have always been inspired to make understanding wine easy through our app.
Simplified taste tags, food pairings and our proprietary algorithms match wines to each person’s individual taste palette, so any novice is empowered to smoothly transition into a wine expert.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
MN: At the start, like any new business, we spent a lot of time pitching to established industry professionals in the wholesale world.
They were all fascinated by the idea, but many did not understand how this app would be a become a lifestyle habit.
Now, we have producers and winemakers ranging from large prestigious names to small independents, approaching us to use Wineapp as a platform to educate their core audiences and provide easy access to product.
Due to our focus on customer reviews and engaging, educational video content, producers realised Wineapp is a great channel to connect themselves to the end user and tell their story.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
MN: No other London-based app offers a wine portfolio as wide as ours with instant delivery or has deployed AI to benefit users the way we have – from preferences via quizzing to smart matching.
Wineapp offers a community for wine lovers, with customer ratings, reviews from wine experts and connoisseurs, as well as content directly from wine producers that aims to educate and assist customers when it comes to choosing their perfect bottle.
Looking at the portfolio alone, you might find stores on Deliveroo or other on-demand apps stock 20-30 different wines. We have the UK’s most expansive range of wine delivered on-demand, day and night.
Many of our wines you’ll fine in top restaurants like Nobu, SushiSamba, Roka, The Ivy and more, but we rebase back down to the best retail price. On average, our customers can save 155% to have the same bottle on their kitchen table.
Having such a large portfolio, however, comes with its own challenges. For example, vintage wines progress every year - this is a big logistical challenge for an on-demand business with limited shelf space to work with.
Within the app technology, it’s a challenge to code in a way that gives you the wine options a customer is most likely to enjoy, even if they don’t know it themselves – a problem that traditional retailers don’t encounter.
For example, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Bordeaux in France tastes nothing like a Napa Valley Cabernet from California; it’s the same grape but different climate, soil, and therefore flavour.
Our algorithms have to understand this, so we can recommend the right wines to consumers.
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?
MN: Most retailers have moved to multichannel online and offline experiences. The challenge is really the “omni” part – ensuring the experience in-store is connected to your online experience.
Our Wineapp tech bar concept does exactly this. When you sit down at your table you scan your QR code to “deliver to your table”, and instantly you have access to the wine knowledge, video reviews, producer information and taste notes from the app.
It means you don’t have to undergo an awkward sommelier experience as the app is your somm. Wineapp is the same app you use to order to your table in two minutes, as it is to order to your home in 20 minutes. The experience is seamless.
Other traditional retailers started with a physical store and are now trying to backward architect an online shopping experience. We saw many examples of this throughout the lockdown period, and it’s been a challenge for them.
With regards to wine shopping, the average time spent in a wine aisle is over two minutes versus 10-15 seconds for groceries. This is because wine is not only an emotive experience, but also quite confusing for the average person.
You’re faced with hundreds of bottles and haven’t got an idea where to start. Plus, much of the time supermarkets, and even wine shops don’t organise their selections in the most logical way, which only adds to the time spent selecting the perfect bottle.
RTIH: What's the best question about your brand asked of you recently by an investor and/or a customer?
MN: I often get asked by customers and investors alike how our business model works, and what our unit economics look like.
On-demand delivery is expensive and we also give a generous £10 off first orders via our referral scheme, which our customers love. Nevertheless, thanks to our dual pricing model called “Mix 4”, we are able to compete.
Many retailers offer a “case price” which discounts bottles if you buy a case of six of the same bottle. We reinvented that concept with the “Mix 4”, allowing customers to get 10-40% off every bottle when they mix and match any four bottles, providing variety on top.
This is much easier to do on an app than physically picking in a store. It means customers are rewarded with huge discounts when they buy more, and we ensure healthy unit economics with higher AOV.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from Wineapp over the next 12 months?
MN: All our orders are fulfilled through a current total of three dark stores that collectively cover most of London for 20-minute on-demand delivery (guaranteed – or your money back), as well as next-day delivery for the rest of the UK.
With the biggest on-demand wine portfolio delivering to over one hundred thousand users, in the next 12 months we are working on expanding our 20 min delivery guarantee to large cities in the UK and other European cities.
The plan to expand into other cities will include introducing a different delivery model that takes a number of local considerations and other industry insights into account, for example, cars are better suited than bikes in rural areas, and wine portfolios evolve with different regions.
With that, the team is developing a brand new driver app to host and manage all delivery drivers on the Wineapp roster.
Expansion into the rest of Europe will begin with densely populated wine drinking cities where this service is on demand. Top of the list is Paris – Parisians drink the equivalent of 697 million bottles of wine per year, more than double what Londoners drink per capita.
We are soon introducing a wine scanner feature, as well as adding hundreds of new options to the portfolio. As well as supporting local producers, we onboarded 95% of Chapel Down’s wines last week.
We also have plans to launch the UK’s very first hybrid wine bar in London – stay tuned for more!
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