Uber plans to shut down its alcohol delivery app Drizly by March, which the ride-hailing service acquired in 2021 for $1.1 billion. The app delivered purchases to people’s doorsteps and saw liquor sales skyrocket during the pandemic lockdowns.
Grizzly sales peaked on April 17, 2020, with a reported 1,000% increase compared to a year ago.
But growth has slowed since then.
Drizly laid off 100 employees last year and began integrating into Uber’s food delivery app, Uber Eats. An Uber spokesperson told the Washington Post that the decision was based on consumers preferring a single app to order groceries, including alcohol.
But that’s not all. In 2020, Drizly said a hack exposed the information of 2.5 million of its customers. In 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that the company was aware of the cybersecurity flaws but failed to fix them.
The FTC ordered Drizly to destroy “personal data it collected that is not necessary for it to provide products or services to consumers,” limiting the app’s ability to profit off selling user data.