Winelivery: Wines, Beers and Drinks and Your Door Step Now

Francesco Magro, CEO at Winelivery tells us about the doorstep delivery business.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Francesco Magro: Thanks for asking. We thank God everyone’s fine!   

Tell us about you, your career, and how you founded Winelivery. 

Francesco Magro: I graduated from Bocconi and immediately started working as a consultant, dealing almost immediately with innovation and digital projects, and then Winelivery arrived.

The idea was born in 2015, in February, during a dinner with friends where the wine ends and we are literally left high and dry. Ended the last bottle we started to google “Wine delivery” and nothing came out from the search. And here we put irons in the fire, wanting to understand if it could be a viable path we did some research and discovered that there were already 3 services overseas that offered home delivery of alcohol and were collecting important investments.

How does Winelivery innovate?  

Francesco Magro: Winelivery is the first service that offers home delivery of alcoholic beverages at the ideal temperature. Our company boasts a very short supply chain, we have direct relationships with all producers. This structure allows those who produce wine or other beverages a very widespread territorial diffusion and those who want to enjoy a good drink to easily find the perfect bottle and receive it in less than 30 minutes… at the ideal temperature!

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances? 

Francesco Magro: Our business is based mostly on last-mile delivery, so as all the other companies in the same field in this period we saw an important increase in the business. As for our company in 2020, we grew 600% compared to the previous year reaching more than 750 thousand downloads and a net turnover of 7.5 million.

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources and what are the lessons learned? 

Francesco Magro: Last year saw an important increase in the number of people working for Winelivery. We opened more than 50 new stores around Italy and had to find many collaborators and riders. There’s an opportunity for everyone even in tough times: many of our new collaborators found in Winelivery a way to overcome the issues due to the Coronavirus.

How did your customer relationship management evolve? Do you use any specific tools to be efficient? 

Francesco Magro: We’ve always been a technological platform and all our relationships were managed via our CRM or, in specific cases, by our customer service representatives. During this period we had to reinforce our customer service department by adding more collaborators and also changing tools.

Did you benefit from any government grants, and did that help keep your business afloat? 

Francesco Magro: We were one of the little businesses that grew during the pandemic so we had no need of support.

Your final thoughts?

Francesco Magro: The Coronavirus gave a shake to the whole world towards digitalization bringing some countries, as for Italy, at least three or four years forward.

Your website?

Website: ​www.winelivery.com 

 iOS Applicaiton

Android Applicaiton