A few months ago we talked about Amazon’s 2020 wishlist for three-tier reforms, which included:
“[C]ontinue unlocking alcohol delivery/curbside pickup in priority states and defend against legislative threats;”
“[O]btain alcohol licenses for all physical and online formats and eliminate license caps in pivotal states;”
“[E]nable central warehousing and the ability to transship in key states.”
Those quotations, pulled from internal documents obtained by Motherboard, suggested the e-commerce behemoth’s designs on the beverage-alcohol business were focused on logistics, which makes sense given the company’s deep expertise in that space. It also set them up for a massive fight with the very-powerful, very-paranoid middle tier; that may be why the company quit barking up that tree.1 Who knows! But tucked in the second item is a reference to “physical… formats” of alcohol retail. Last week, we got a better idea of what that might look like.