Alcohol brands look to bump online sales through recipe platform

Birmingham, Ala.-based eMeals crafts and publishes recipes to help consumers make dinner at night, and recently created a promotional platform that alcohol brands are taking advantage of to pair drinks with that can be shipped with their recipe ingredients.

The company said Bacardi, Jackson Family Wines and Francis Ford Coppola Winery are pairing wines and drinks to recipes that eMeals users can schedule to be shipped with their online grocery fulfillment through Walmart, Kroger, Amazon, Instacart or Shipt. 

The company’s CEO Forrest Collier told Store Brands that no retailer has signed up to use the service yet for its private brands but sees a clear connection. 

Using the company’s “Beverage Add-to-Cart” functionality, alcohol brands can get out in front of consumers using eMeals to pair with their meals.

The function is part of eMeals BrandBuilder program that Francis Ford Coppola was one of the first to sign up to use the platform along with Coca-Cola to promote its beverages to accompany a meal, and Tyson Foods to promote its Tyson Chicken, Hillshire Farm and Ball Bark Franks products online.

With all of the private label wines launching, eMeals seems like a potential marketing channel for retailers to pair their private label wines and leverage their delivery systems already in play.

When an eMeals subscriber chooses a recipe with a suggested Coppola beverage pairing, the branded recommendations automatically go on the weekly eMeals shopping list for one-tap online grocery fulfillment through Walmart, Kroger, Amazon, Instacart or Shipt. 

The platform seems to have a lot of potential for alcohol pairings, which Collier said have low online penetration.

Per a Rabobank report, alcohol’s share of online share of food and beverage spending is 88% lower than its wallet share in brick-and-mortar stores.

"The digital environment is critical to alcohol sales growth, both directly from e-commerce sales and indirectly from the role that online visibility plays in building brand awareness and generating demand," said Lorran Brown Cosby, vice president of digital commerce at Bacardi North America.