Is there good news for wine delivery on the horizon?

Apparently, wine drinkers aren’t the only ones fed up with Fed Ex and UPS

Imagine my surprise when I saw this headline: “A wave of e-commerce logistics startups is threatening to break the UPS and FedEx duopoly”

Apparently, wine drinkers aren’t the only ones who are fed up with the way Fed Ex and UPS control the delivery market. The story reports that “a slew of new players, juiced by millions in venture capital funding, is entering the package logistics fight to see if they can’t can’t change a decades-old power dynamic.”

Look past the fancy writing, and you’ll discover that UPS and Fed Ex have lost market share, that their on-time and delivery performances are declining, and that they’re even telling unprofitable customers to look for another company to deliver their packages.

Which is no surprise to the blog’s readers. We’ve been talking about this since before the pandemic, when I ran a couple of posts listing wine delivery horror stories. I followed that up last month for the Pix.wine site, which also elicited a fair amount of traffic and comment.

That’s the good news. The bad news? For one, the story doesn’t specifically mention wine or alcohol delivery – and especially its particular and infuriating delivery requirements. For another, all the fancy writing (yes, the story even mentions unicorns) details more hopes and dreams than actual, concrete solutions. After all, just because someone throws venture capital money at a problem doesn’t mean the problem will be solved.

Still, this is the best news wine drinkers have had in a very long time. As, as I joked with the editor of the Pix piece, any news is better than chasing the delivery truck down the street.