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Next Glass Partners With Total Wine, Wine.com, Drizly To Offer Discounts

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Effective today, the Next Glass wine and beer mobile app will partner with Total Wine & More, Wine.com, and Drizly to offer discounts to consumers on its recommended wines.

Those are some heavy hitting retailers, matching up with one very savvy app.

This isn't the first time Next Glass has gotten my attention.

I've written before about their staff, which includes chemists and augmented reality specialists.

I've written about their origins -- not San Francisco or New York but Wilmington, North Carolina.

I've written about the app's functionality, namely, to match the user's DNA with a wine's DNA.

And I've written about the opportunity the app presented to wineries, especially those with limited distribution: any winery is welcome to send a bottle to Next Glass for analysis, and once the wine is in their database, it's factored into the recommendation algorithm that presents wines to users.

Which is a great opportunity for wineries to gain exposure of their wines to key consumers in the exploding mobile space.

Today, Next Glass is taking the next step -- into the sales end of things -- and it's a big one:

It is partnering with major retailers to offer personalized discounts of recommended wines.

They aren't just any retailers, either. Total Wine & More is America’s largest independent retailer of fine wine, beer, and spirits with over $2 billion in annual sales in 116 stores across 16 states. Wine.com has been the top online retailer for wine for the past decade, with sales of more than two million bottles per year. And Drizly is the leading on-demand alcohol delivery service that's recently raised $13 million in Series A funding.

The essential premise of Next Glass, in a nutshell, is to help consumers who are standing in the aisle of a wine shop choose the wines that they're scientifically predisposed to like. (Being "scientifically predisposed" to liking a wine sounds a little weird at first, I know. That's where the DNA matching comes in, of users' expressed preferences and wines' chemical composition.)

Now, those users will be further incentivized to purchase a wine that's been recommended to them because they'll be getting a deal on it.

Total Wine & More offers the bricks and mortar experience -- when the user is physically in the aisle, smartphone in hand -- while Wine.com and Drizly are online. Orders placed through Wine.com ship the next day. Orders placed through Drizly are delivered in less than an hour within their 15 markets, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.

It's an attractive and smart partnership. Still, I had some questions for Kurt Taylor, CEO of Next Glass, about federal regulations on alcohol discounts, whether Next Glass' deals will be above and beyond what the retailers currently offer, and his advice on the best way for producers to get a toehold into this new layer of his platform.

The federal regulations for offering discounts on alcohol are complicated, to say the least. How are you handling that challenge? Is discounting allowed in some states, and not in others…?

Taylor: The regulations are difficult for even industry insiders to follow. The degree to which discounting of alcohol is permitted (and the manner in which those discounts are offered) vary state-by-state. California, for example, doesn't allow buy-one-get-one free for wine, so you'll see retailers there offer buy-one-get-one for five cents promotions. Our partners have a deep understanding of what is allowed where, and we'll only display appropriate discounts in the states in which they're allowed. Total Wine operates in 16 states, Drizly is in 15 markets, and Wine.com ships to most states, and they've been through this before. While the discounting rules are arcane, our partners have dealt with them for years.

How will the discounts “jive” with what the retailers are already offering, either in-store or online? Will the discounts offered through Next Glass be on wine that is not already discounted through promotions that the stores are running?

Taylor: Some will be for products they're already discounting, but most will be unique and tailored specific to your individual taste preferences. For example, you may have a high Next Glass score for ACME Wine Cabernet Sauvignon and receive a discount on that bottle that a friend might not. Meanwhile, your friend may have a high score for ACME Wine Merlot Founders Reserve and receive a discount on that product that you aren't served. The real differentiation is that for the first time alcohol retailers are going to be able to offer "smart" promotions based on the palates of their consumers, not just "spraying and praying" discounts, so to speak.

How would you advise wine and beer producers to interact with Next Glass, now that you’ve added this new layer to your platform?

Taylor: It's been fun to watch wineries from New York, breweries from Arizona, and beer and wine aficionados from the states in between proactively reach out to ensure we've tested beers and wines that might not be as widely distributed. Our goal is to have anything our users can get their hands on and, while we're able to cover most of that ourselves, complete coverage wouldn't be possible without smaller wineries and breweries contacting us directly!

Find Cathy Huyghe online at cathyhuyghe.com and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.