E-commerce has spread fast into the alcohol industry. One of the newer apps is BlueCart, which streamlines business between suppliers and restaurants. It is free to download and use.
StateWays recently spoke with the BlueCart’s CEO Konstantin Zvereff about the process of launching an alcohol app — of finding tech-savvy users and working within different state laws — and where he sees his product in the ever-growing category.
SW: What does BlueCart do?
KZ: Our app allows restaurants to place all their orders to all their suppliers in one click, and organizes all those orders for suppliers on the other end.
Let’s say you run a bar and you order from five different distributors. Just open up your phone, build your cart, click “place order” and all five of your suppliers will get their specific order automatically simplified and organized.
It’s a private order management tool that was built for both buyers and suppliers. You can run a tiny dive bar in Baltimore, or be a massive corporate distributor in Chicago.
SW: How do wholesalers and suppliers use it?
KZ: For wholesalers, BlueCart is all about driving more business and simplifying the business you already have. BlueCart automatically organizes incoming orders onto one, simple dashboard that managers can break down by sales rep, product, historical ordering patterns, etc.
Sales reps love it because it saves them tons of time spent processing orders, so that they can get out there and make more sales (which should make everyone a lot happier).
Instead of waking up in the morning to a hundred different voicemails or emails, wholesalers simply log on to BlueCart and everything is right there. They can customize prices on an individual client basis, and communication is tied to specific orders or even products, so that fewer sales get returned, and everyone is clear on what’s supposed to be happening.
SW: What was the process like of launching an alcohol app?
KZ: It was definitely a learning experience. Before we launched the alcohol part of BlueCart, we had no idea how many complications the industry has to deal with.
From relatively simple things like splitting orders and breaking cases, to complicated dealings with state agencies, we gathered a ton of user feedback to make sure that our app worked well in any situation. It took some time to get it right, but listening to our users was the key.
SW: When did you launch and where?
KZ: We launched BlueCart (formerly under the very difficult name “Improvonia”) in Washington, DC in July of 2014.
SW: How does it make money?
KZ: BlueCart is 100% free to use. Our user base got so large that small advertisements can pay our bills.
Companies like Square, for instance, want to talk to restaurants and suppliers right at the moment when a decision-maker is placing or taking an order, and we can make that happen for them with very simple, unobtrusive ads. Plus, we plan to launch some paid premium features down the road.
SW: What is the differentiator between this and similar apps?
KZ: First, BlueCart is free for both buyers and suppliers. Every other app out there is either charging restaurants a monthly fee, or taking a cut of every order from suppliers.
On top of that, BlueCart was built to help both sides of the equation — buyers and suppliers — do better business. The few other apps that have tried to help manage ordering have stumbled because they tend to favor one side over another.
For instance, some work only for the restaurant and bar side, playing a heavy price-comparison card at the expense of established relationships with suppliers. Others build apps that work only for one supplier, which means the restaurant now has to download a dozen different apps instead of one. Some even highlight price comparison and charge suppliers for the privilege of joining a race to the bottom.
SW: How popular are alcohol apps? What are their future?
KZ: We can’t speak to the alcohol-delivery apps that handle deliveries to people’s houses, but mobile apps for the industry are just going to get better.
People always talk about how the younger generation coming up is going to usher in more and more tech, but the older generation will resist. We actually found that if your app is simple enough, age isn’t an issue. There are people in their seventies using BlueCart just as happily as young reps in their twenties.
The limiting factor used to be that not everyone had a smartphone. Now, apps like BlueCart work as easily on smartphones as they do on laptops.
SW: How does your app work within the complex network of alcohol laws?
KZ: As a communication service, we don’t buy, sell, deliver, take payment for, or touch alcohol (outside of personal consumption…). We just streamline communication.
SW: What has been the response to BlueCart?
KZ: Overwhelming. In our first month, our goal was to get 16 restaurants on board. We got over a hundred. At a year and a half in, we have over four thousand restaurants and suppliers on the platform. And almost all of this has been word of mouth. We’ve done basically no advertising.
Kyle Swartz is the associate editor of StateWays Magazine. Reach him at kswartz@epgacceleration.com, or 763-383-4447.
