Shaking up the drinks industry

How do you bring small batch spirits to a global market at scale?

In an age of unprecedented choice and bespoke brands, consumer tastes are changing. Preferring human stories over conforming to big brands, they’re often looking to alternative specialists to satisfy their taste.

If you’re a multinational beverage giant, responding quickly to those changing demands with small batch productions can be a challenge. Like most industries, it’s ripe for disruption.

Keen to help our clients in the FMCG space reimagine the art of the possible, we wanted to get into the shoes of the disruptor, to think differently about the trends and opportunities, to explore how to turn points of weakness in the sector into strengths.

And what better way to do this than designing our own drinks start-up? A digital business selling imaginative drinks products - from flavoured spirits and out-of-the-box cocktails to new low and no alcohol beverages.

Yime is the concept we developed for a platform-based business that connects creators who have an idea for a drink, with producers who can manufacturer that drink, with consumers who are looking to buy something unique online. Providing the online platform to connect each party, Yime signals a new way to create, buy and sell drinks. The result? Anyone with an idea for a flavoured spirit, cocktail or non-alcoholic beverage can make it in a couple of clicks.

Test out the prototype app

Insights on the future of the drinks industry

The Yime commercial model

Bringing Yime to life

While tech has already disrupted how whole industries manage distribution, from entertainment and takeaways to eyewear and mattresses, it has yet to have a major impact in the spirits and ready to drink space: a market worth over £6bn in the UK.¹

With consumers increasingly expecting something new and innovative, it’s no surprise there’s been such a positive response to the explosion of small brands and startups entering the market. From the rapid growth in ready to drink, to the increase in the number of craft gin producers. Then came Covid-19 which accelerated the shift to online for alcohol sales, changing how customers make purchasing decisions. All this paving new ways to target customers with new and innovative products.

With all this disruption in mind, we spoke to people in the drinks industry and found pent-up frustration. Consumers now want:

• The story behind the spirit – people prefer human brands and want to meet the makers, understand their story and become a part of it.
• A personalised experience - “I’ll have what s/he’s having” doesn’t cut it anymore. There’s a movement away from the mainstream established drinks and towards new and individual choices.
• A chance to be inspired – choice is exploding but in predictable ways, whether that’s provenance, packaging, or flavours. It can be hard for makers to stand out, and the human story is almost always in the background.
• To support small batch suppliers – if you can self-publish books and music, why not drinks? For the first time the drinks industry is becoming meritocratic and democratic.

What does a £500mn opportunity to connect creators, consumers and producers in the UK really look like?

• The Yime concept starts with creators. They can develop their recipe and brand all on the platform. Once finished, their spirit, cocktail or non-alcoholic beverage goes on pre-sale on Yime. Creators can then focus on promoting their product to their audience.
• Consumers on Yime can purchase a huge range of unique drinks online and pre-order new drinks in development. Yime’s hyper-personal recommendations knows exactly what they want and when they want it.
• When a new drink hits its minimum order requirement it’s assigned a producer to make it. Distilleries can accept or reject orders based on whether they have spare capacity. Producers are assigned based on availability, capability and proximity to majority of customers.
• Once a drink is made and bottled it’s shipped to consumers using third party logistics firms. Consumers can then give creators detailed feedback on what they liked or disliked to help inspire the makers’ next creation.
• So, how does Yime make money? Creators take 10% of the sale price of each bottle. Then 70% is given to the distiller, to cover production costs. The final 20% goes to Yime to cover the costs of running the platform.

We turned to our team of data engineers to demonstrate the business model without actually having to launch it. Developing the ability to link customer demand for new drinks with the existing distillers that can produce the product, means Yime could scale rapidly without expensive investment in production or compromising efficiency. The asset light nature of the production process means Yime could sell thousands of brands without owning or producing a single one.

Working with our simulation team, we built a virtual model of the Yime network. The simulation mimicked each of the three key participants in the Yime ecosystem: creators, consumers, and producers. For each of these we were able to understand how changes in their behaviour (such as changing consumer preferences) would affect the Yime platform performance.

At Deloitte, when we think about the future of industry, we take bold and pioneering ideas and bring them to life in a practical and provocative way. Using our Venture methodology, we bring together some of our best entrepreneurial, technical and creative thinkers from across the business, to spot disruption, develop bold ideas, test them quickly, and rapidly iterate prototypes.

For Yime, this meant...

• Bringing together experts from our consumer practice with our innovation teams, to deliver a bold, entrepreneurial concept with a focus on industry insights.
• Collaborating with our strategy teams to understand the opportunity for a new player to disrupt the spirits market and carry out market research and interviews with customers and SMEs.
• Validating the business model with our data engineers and simulation technology.
• Drafting in our tech and creative teams to bring the story to life. Developing a prototype, hypothetical brand, and go-to-market strategy to help articulate our vision.

The result? An exciting prototype that emerged from a bold idea addressing market trends into a creative concept with the ability to disrupt the spirit industry.

Through Yime, we imagined a new market - a space for a business that is tech first. It’s a concept that allows unlimited innovation and has real people and their stories at its core.

In a market full of drinks companies, our Yime concept is counter trend. Not just a drinks company, but a digital business selling drinking experiences.

Bringing together our best entrepreneurial, technical and creative experts, we collaborated to disrupt the industry – turning its weaknesses into strengths and unlocking opportunities for the future.

Building on our Yime experimentation, we're currently exploring bold new provocations for the beauty and healthcare spaces. If you'd like to chat about how we can help you disrupt your industry, we'd love to hear from you.