Italian startup Bevy chugs in $2 million for home delivery of heavy beverage cases

An everyday problem that is still far too common in most parts of Europe is the process of carrying home water cases from the supermarket or discounter. Despite the rise of q-commerce players and supermarkets offering delivery services, there is a white space in the market for the fast delivery of bulky products and beverages.

Addressing the problem, Italian startup Bevy, (not to be confused with American startup Bevi) is delivering water and everyday beverages to a customer’s doorstep within 3 hours at supermarket prices, senza delivery fee. It should be noted, however, that delivery is available between the operating hours of 8 am and 10 pm, Monday through Saturday. If you're thirsty on Sunday, che sfortuna.

After rolling out same-day beverage delivery services in April this year, the startup has now raised $2 million in funding to kick off operations across Italy. The pre-seed round was led by FoodLabs along with the participation of angel investors including Matteo Pichi, founder of Poke House, and Vincenzo Ferrieri, founder of Cioccolati Italiani and Bun Burger.

Making the leap from Senior Consultant at McKinsey to co-founder at Bevy, Berlin-native Hendrik Wawers explains why Bevy and why Italy: “We want to make people’s everyday lives easier by removing the pain of carrying heavy water and beverage cases. Italy is the perfect market to launch this service as it is the country with the highest bottled water consumption per capita in Europe.”

In 2020, 82% of Italian consumers drank water from PET bottles. In a bid to reduce PET bottles in the beverage space, the startup aims to make it easier to purchase and return recyclable glass bottles, traditionally an area reserved for the hotels, restaurants, and catering sector. Perhaps observed by Wawers during his time at New York University's Stern School of Business, Bevy is instituting a deposit system, one that promotes and incentivises the use and return of bottles. Naturally, keeping in time with the ESG tune of the day, Bevy plans to deliver said bottles via a fleet of electric vans.

“In the past 20 years, only one Italian startup has reached unicorn status. This is odd considering Italy is the fourth-largest economy in Europe and has a lot of homegrown tech talent," added co-founder Federica Lettieri. "We want to lay the foundation for a thriving startup ecosystem in Milan that can compete with the likes of Berlin and Paris in the long term.”