Food Lover's Market started life as a fruit and veg shop called Fruit & Veg City, and today the group also runs a liquor chain, Market Liquors, which grew out of a partnership with Diamond's Discount Liquor. Until now, that meant walking into a bottle store.
On 19 October Market Liquors launched a delivery app that lets anyone 18 and over order wine, beer and spirits on their phone and have them brought to the door.
The app draws on participating Market Liquors and Diamond Discount Liquor stores, so whether it works for you depends on your address, and the app checks that for you. To get people trying it, the first eligible order comes with free delivery, and some deals are only available in the app. General manager Byron Stain put the reasoning plainly: "Convenience is becoming increasingly important to how South Africans shop."
Why the bottle store trip is shrinking
The numbers back him up. South Africans are expected to spend about R159 billion online this year, according to World Wide Worx, up 22.5% and roughly a tenth of all retail spending.
Liquor is following the same road. Retail researcher Trade Intelligence says shoppers are increasingly buying alcohol through delivery apps instead of planning a big stock-up run, and the buying is getting more spontaneous, often set off by a social gathering or even a change in the weather. The market for alcohol bought to drink somewhere else grew 4.2% last year, to R109 billion.
The first booze app ended up selling groceries
South Africa has watched a liquor delivery app try this before. Bottles launched in 2016 as the country's first on-demand alcohol delivery app, and in 2018 it started delivering from Pick n Pay's liquor stores. Then lockdown banned alcohol sales in 2020, and Bottles switched to delivering groceries instead. Pick n Pay bought it for R33 million, and in August 2021 it relaunched the app as Pick n Pay asap!.
Now Food Lover’s Market is entering a very different delivery market, where platforms like Checkers Sixty60 and Pick n Pay asap! already allow customers to order groceries, alcohol and other everyday essentials through a single app. But Market Liquors is taking a more specialised approach, focusing specifically on delivering beer, wine and spirits.
It’ll be interesting to see how a dedicated liquor delivery app competes against platforms that offer a little bit of everything. And with exclusive deals and free delivery on customers’ first eligible orders, Market Liquors is giving people a pretty good reason to give it a try.
