Drizly, an Uber-owned alcohol e-commerce delivery platform, began “company wide” layoffs this week, according to several social media posts by former employees.
Drizly confirmed the layoffs to Brewbound, but initially did not share how many people were affected.
“This is a hard day,” the company said in a statement shared with Brewbound.
“Those team members who are leaving us have been a huge part of Drizly, and we have a deep gratitude for all their contributions. We will build on the foundations that they established as we move forward with the shared Drizly and Uber visions for alcohol. As much as we regret having to say goodbye to so many talented colleagues, these tough decisions must be made in order to secure Drizly’s future and lay the foundation for the long-term success of both brands and our combined businesses.”
After Brewbound first reported the news, Drizly sent issued a second statement, confirming that approximately 100 roles were affected:
“Drizly made the difficult decision to reduce the size of its team by approximately 100 roles,” Drizly said. “This was a part of a corporate restructure as Drizly officially begins integrating certain operations into Uber for a strategically aligned, centralized BevAlc vision.”
The news follows Drizly’ implementation of a “new brand direction” at the end of 2022, featuring a “redesigned product experience” and expanded shipping capabilities. Drizly also added several new features to its platform late last year, including Drizly ads – a “full suite of advertising tools” allowing bev-alc brands to “reach consumers at every stage of their buying journey” – and The Stir, a digital drinks magazine.
Included in the layoffs was Drizly content producer Jeremy Glass, who helped launch The Stir, according to a post on his LinkedIn page. Glass described the job cuts as a “layoff tidal wave” in a now-deleted post on Twitter Tuesday.
Drizly “plans to continue The Stir,” a spokesperson told Brewbound. After the initial publication of this story, Glass’s LinkedIn and Twitter posts were deleted.
The news also follows a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed order against Drizly and its CEO, James Cory Rellas, which determined Rellas and the company “failed to use appropriate information security practices to protect consumers’ personal information,” resulting in a data breach that affected 2.5 million consumers. The order would require Rellas and Drizly to destroy any consumer data that is “not necessary for it to provide products or services to consumers,” limit future data collection and implement a comprehensive security program with safeguards to prevent a future incident.
Uber acquired Drizly in early 2021 for $1.1 billion in cash and stock. Shortly after, Uber forged a partnership with Gopuff, an on-demand convenience delivery retailer, a move that drew scrutiny from the FTC over competition concerns. With no update on the FTC investigation since 2021, Uber has gone forward with plans to merge Drizly and Gopuff’s resources. In January, the companies announced the addition of Gopuff’s warehouses and brick-and-mortar liquor retailers (Liquor Barn, acquired in 2021, and BevMo, acquired in 2020) to Drizly’s online marketplace in 26 states.
“As we continue to build the best shopping experience for beverage alcohol, teaming up with Gopuff is our next step in offering consumers convenient delivery options for drinks,” Blaine Grinna, Drizly’s senior director of retail ops, said in a press release. “Drizly’s infrastructure for alcohol e-commerce coupled with Gopuff’s network of commerce locations will extend the ease of on-demand delivery of beer, wine and spirits nationwide and help even more customers of legal drinking age shop the best drinks for the moment.”
This story was updated March 29 at 12:10 p.m. to include additional statements from Drizly.