The Liquor Industry Is Still Up for Grabs

We’re going down a different dirt road this week. A business can grow like a weed or grow like an oak tree. Both can get big quickly, but only one is built to still be standing years from now.

Normally, we use these posts to talk about liquor retail, technology, inventory, automation, or something new we're building at Liquor Bee.

This week, we wanted to talk about something bigger: how we believe a business should be built and scaled the right way.

We're still learning. We're still growing. And we certainly don't pretend to have all the answers.

But as Liquor Bee continues to grow, there are a few lessons we keep coming back to. They're reminders to ourselves just as much as they are advice to anyone else building a company.

Technology will change. Buzzwords will change. Strategies will change.

The fundamentals of building a great business don't.

And we think that's especially important in an industry like ours, because the opportunity in front of liquor retail is enormous.

Look across different industries and you'll notice something interesting.

Eventually, a handful of technology companies begin to define how an entire vertical operates.

Restaurants is dominated by a few handful of players. Beauty and wellness have built their own category leaders. Other specialized industries have gone through the same transformation.

But liquor retail?

The industry is still wide open.

A Fragmented Industry Creates an Incredible Opportunity

Travel from one state to another and you'll find completely different liquor markets.

Different distributors.

Different regulations.

Different ordering processes.

Different inventory challenges.

Different technology.

And often, completely different ways of doing business.

There are plenty of companies serving liquor retailers. There are regional players, legacy systems, newer technology companies and everything in between.

But there isn't one system that has become synonymous with the American liquor store.

Nobody owns this vertical yet.

That creates an enormous opportunity.

And we believe Liquor Bee has a chance to help define what the next generation of liquor retail looks like.

Technology Alone Won't Win It

Right now, everyone is talking about AI.

AI-powered inventory.

AI agents.

Agentic workflows.

Predictive analytics.

Tomorrow there will be another buzzword.

We've seen this movie before.

When "the cloud" became the next big thing, suddenly every software company became a cloud company. Eventually, cloud technology stopped being a differentiator. It simply became part of building modern software.

AI will be transformational. We're investing heavily in it ourselves.

But eventually, AI will become expected too.

Technology changes. The fundamentals of serving customers don't.

You can build the best AI agent in the world.

You can automate 90% of a liquor store's back office.

You can build beautiful software.

But when a merchant has a problem on Friday night, they don't want to hear about your AI strategy.

They want someone who answers the phone.

Product Is Offense. Service Is Defense.

At Liquor Bee, we think about product as our offense.

We want to build unbelievable software.

We want to automate things liquor retailers have been doing manually for decades. Ordering, receiving, inventory management, analytics and checkout should all work together.

But offense is only half the game.

Defense wins championships.

Our defense is our people.

It's answering the phone.

It's knowing our customers by name.

It's understanding how their market operates.

It's listening when a store tells us something isn't working.

It's taking their feedback seriously enough to change the product.

It's showing up.

It's doing the hard things that don't necessarily look impressive in a software demo.

Because acquiring a customer is one thing.

Keeping that customer for the next 10 or 20 years is something entirely different.

And when that customer starts telling other liquor store owners about you, you've built something far more valuable than another lead-generation funnel.

You've built trust.

We'd Rather Build 500 Advocates Than 10,000 Accounts

Software companies love talking about scale.

How quickly can we go from 100 merchants to 500?

From 500 to 1,000?

From 1,000 to 5,000?

Those numbers matter. Sure.

But there's another number we care about just as much:

How many of those customers would recommend you to another liquor store owner?

We aren't interested in sacrificing the customer experience just so we can put a bigger merchant count on a slide.

Because liquor retail is a relationship business.

Store owners talk to other store owners.

Distributors know everyone.

Employees move between stores.

Word travels.

A great reputation compounds.

A bad one does too.

To Our Competitors Reading This

We know competitors read what we put out.

That's okay.

We don't mind telling you our playbook.

There isn't some revolutionary secret buried inside Liquor Bee that we're afraid someone is going to discover.

Our playbook is actually pretty simple.

Build a great product.

Answer the phone.

Listen to your customers.

Do what you say you're going to do.

Hire good people.

Know your industry.

Fix your mistakes.

Keep improving.

Take care of the people who trusted you with their business.

That's it.

These aren't trade secrets.

They're fundamental business principles that all of us have been taught.

Knowing them is easy.

Actually doing them every single day is hard.

And that's the difference.

Business Is Hard. We Lean Into the Hard.

We have core values at Liquor Bee for a reason.

They're not words we created for a poster on the office wall.

Service. Dependable. Growth Mindset.

We expect ourselves to live by them, and we hold each other accountable when we don't.

That doesn't mean we always get everything right.

We don't.

Building a company is hard.

Building software is hard.

Supporting merchants is hard.

Entering new markets is hard.

Hiring and developing great people is hard.

Listening to criticism is hard.

Admitting when you're wrong and fixing something is hard.

But we've learned something:

The hard stuff is usually where the growth is.

So we lean into it.

We don't want to build a company that becomes successful enough that it starts avoiding difficult things.

We want the opposite.

As Liquor Bee grows, we want to become better at tackling them.

Because anyone can talk about customer service.

Anyone can put "customer obsessed" on a website.

Anyone can announce another AI feature.

The hard part is doing the work when nobody is watching.

We Take Liquor Seriously

Liquor Bee isn't generic retail software with "liquor" added to the website.

This is the vertical we chose.

We study it.

We listen to it.

We build around it.

We learn the weird edge cases.

We understand that what works perfectly in one state might not work the same way in the next.

And instead of trying to force liquor retailers into software designed for everybody else, we build around the way this industry actually operates.

Our biggest advantage isn't any single feature.

It's that we listen to our customers.

We're close to them.

That relationship gives us the feedback to build a better product.

The better product helps us earn more customers.

Those customers give us more feedback.

And the cycle continues.

Our Goal Is Bigger Than Building a POS

We believe liquor retail is sitting at a unique moment.

The market is fragmented.

Technology is changing rapidly.

AI is opening possibilities that didn't exist five years ago.

And there still isn't a single technology platform that defines the industry.

Someone is going to earn that position.

We believe the winner won't simply be whoever has the most AI features.

It won't necessarily be whoever raises the most money.

And it won't be whoever can acquire 5,000 merchants the fastest.

It will be the company that combines great technology, great people, deep industry expertise and an almost unreasonable commitment to its customers.

That's what we're trying to build at Liquor Bee.

Because we genuinely believe serving our customers is a privilege.

We want the best technology.

We want the best automation.

We want the best product in liquor retail.

But we also want you to know the people behind it.

To be able to call us.

To tell us when we're wrong.

To help shape what we build next.

Because no matter how sophisticated technology becomes, there are some things we don't believe should ever be automated away.

Relationships are one of them.

At Liquor Bee, it truly is our pleasure to serve you.