Customer Profile

Providing meals to employees is a popular perk that many companies offer to enhance job satisfaction. It saves employees the hassle of leaving the office for meals and puts money back in their pockets. For companies without an on-site kitchen, they often turn to them like ours for meal services. Our partner works with local restaurants to offer their food to businesses seeking catering solutions. This collaboration provides restaurants with a straightforward way to secure corporate orders without the need to establish their own sales teams.

The Problem – Meeting Customer Demand for Alcoholic Beverages with Meals and Scaling Nationwide

Although their portfolio boasts excellent restaurants, one key element missing from their menus was alcohol: wine, beer, and spirits. Imagine enjoying some ice cold Mexican beers with your DIY taco bar!

While our partner could have partnered with local licensed sellers in each state or city they operated in, this approach presented several challenges. These retailers typically do not specialize in curating beverage menus and supplies for events or parties. Additionally, due to their busy schedules and often being short-staffed, they lack the capacity for the necessary ongoing communication and coordination.

The Process

This company approached Swill to explore the possibility of adding alcoholic beverages to their catering services across various cities. Leveraging our extensive network of trusted retailers in these markets, Swill could facilitate the fulfillment of orders efficiently. However, given the vast array of available beverage options, we needed to develop a strategy to streamline and curate the selections, ensuring a manageable and appealing offering for our partner.

The Solution: Utilize Swill’s Vendor Network and Create Curated Menus for Easy Ordering

By collaborating closely with our partner, we gained valuable insights into their most frequent requests for alcoholic beverages and the types of events that would typically require these offerings. As a result, we implemented several key solutions:

Curated Preset Packages: We developed multiple preset beverage packages tailored to the most common event needs. These packages include essentials such as ice and cups to facilitate serving.

Standardized Beverage Lists: We streamlined the beer and wine selections to feature the most popular and readily available products, ensuring consistency and simplicity for our partner.

Scalable Cocktail Packages: We introduced cocktail packages that can be easily scaled to accommodate different serving quantities, providing flexibility for various event sizes.

Bartending Services: We launched professional bartending services in each city, offering their clients the option to have an onsite expert to serve drinks at their events.

A key aspect of our partnership was making our experts available for consultations. Whether our partner needed custom cocktail packages or advice on beer and wine pairings with their menu, we provided the guidance they needed. This level of personalized service is something that cannot be matched by simply contacting a local wine store.

As orders were placed through the Swill platform, they were seamlessly dispatched to our network of vendors for timely fulfillment. When required, bartenders or servers were also booked to ensure a comprehensive service experience.

Key Achievements

Expanded Alcoholic Beverage Offerings: Successfully launched a comprehensive alcoholic beverage service for our partner across major cities, including New York City, Boston, Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Standardized Beverage Selections: Established a consistent beverage offering in each city, ensuring all locations have access to uniform packages and beverage options.

Accelerated Beverage Curation: Significantly reduced the turnaround time for curating and delivering beverages, enhancing operational efficiency.

Boosted Monthly Revenue: Increased monthly revenue by introducing a highly sought-after product category—alcohol—to the partner’s offerings.

Key Insights from This Case Study

This partnership not only benefited our partner but also generated additional revenue for Swill and its retail partners, all without any marketing expenditure. Leveraging our extensive experience, we excel in the intricacies of event planning and, most importantly, in building effective communication with alcohol retailers.