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The continued eCommerce boom is giving brands more competition and investment potential than ever before, and many are turning to eCommerce tech to address challenges and opportunities. Some of the pandemic-related eCommerce innovations are becoming standardized practices. As struggling retail chains look to improve their online strategies and as other enterprise-level eCommerce businesses continue to expand, demand for eCommerce Tech talent has risen steadily. eCommerce solutions include capabilities ranging from automation to customer relationship management, designing websites, providing customer service, marketing-related functionality, and more help in expanding businesses.
By digitizing inventory ordering and consumer purchasing, Bevz is not only transforming convenience stores with e-commerce tech but also changing the entire snack and drink industry. The vision of the company lies in converting more than 100,000 independent liquor stores across the nation with the technology, data, and support they need to compete against corporate chains and create the largest network of liquor stores in the world.
Jason Vego went to UC Santa Barbara for his undergrad, where he majored in Communication and double minored in Business & Applied Psychology. He is completing his MBA from UCLA Anderson this year with a specialization in Entrepreneurship.
He has worked at multiple startups and was formerly the Head of Global Employee Communications & Engagement at Citrix where he helped 10,000 employees across 44 countries manage their teams, set and execute goals aligned with the company strategy, and retain top talent. He has also managed global operations and marketing teams.
He is a three-time founder and has experienced a lot of failures, learnings, and success. His former startups were a mobile dog grooming platform and a live online shopping platform.
Jason is now the CEO & Co-Founder of Bevz, where he is focused on setting and executing the company strategy and vision, building a strong culture, maintaining consistent and scalable company growth, and recruiting, retaining, and coaching a superstar team. He also owns all fundraising efforts and investor relations and is constantly talking with and pitching current and future potential investors.
At Bevz, the team is optimizing the alcohol and snack industry with the first-ever SaaS platform for convenience stores. The company is focused on transforming more than 150k stores across the nation with the technology, data, and support needed to automate and integrate their inventory in-store and across e-commerce. This platform focuses specifically on integrating and automating their inventory ordering with in-store sales and e-commerce.
Convenience stores are an integral part of the snack and drink industry ecosystem. It's a market that has been growing every year, and each store the company works with, has approximately 10,000 unique items and does more than US$1M dollars in annual revenue. Historically, these stores avoided technology at all costs, but after the pandemic, the entire industry is changing.
First, convenience stores are finally realizing that they need e-commerce to stay relevant, but they don't have the technology or tools to do this effectively, but now Bevz is a savior for these stores.
Secondly, snack and drink brands are pushing convenience stores to order their inventory online, instead of handling orders in-person and over the phone. Bevz gives these stores the ability to efficiently order online while ensuring they have the products in stock that their customer want.
Lastly, e-commerce companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub are investing heavily in convenience store delivery, but struggle to manage convenience stores that have significantly more unique SKUs and are less tech-savvy than restaurants in most cases. Bevz gives these partners an easy way to ensure convenience stores are effectively selling their products across their delivery platforms.
The company is helping independent convenience stores embrace technology and grow their business. These store owners are primarily first-generation Americans and entrepreneurs that hustled to launch their businesses. These stores have been a pillar of the snack and drink industry for decades, and Bevz is ensuring that it stays that way.
By digitizing inventory ordering and consumer purchasing, the company is not only transforming convenience stores but also changing the entire snack and drink industry. The biggest snack and drink brands in the world want hyper-local buying and sales trends, and the only way to do that is by tracking and integrating technology in these convenience stores across the nation, which Bevz is now starting to do.
Bevz went to market in January 2020 with an e-commerce platform for convenience stores and a mobile app for consumers to order alcohol, food, and beverages from these stores. The pandemic changed everything, and its flagship product quickly became obsolete. He and his team worked hard to deeply understand the needs of convenience stores and the broader industry and transformed the company from an e-commerce marketplace into a B2B SaaS platform.
Jason took over as CEO and led the company's transformation and this innovation saved the company. Bevz would likely not be around today if it stayed the course of the original business and never innovated.
The biggest challenge for the company is the requirement to integrate with a lot of key industry players. In order to offer the best possible solution for convenience stores, Bevz needs to integrate with several e-commerce companies like DoorDash and Uber, and with dozens of snack and drink distributors like SGWS and RNDC. Convincing these companies to integrate their platforms and trust a new, innovative technology company comes with challenges, but both the continuation of trends and the ability to execute will make this challenge easier over time.
Secondly, the company is still early in the market. Though convenience stores are more receptive to technology and innovation post-pandemic, they are not as far along as many other small-to-medium businesses. To bring this innovation to life nationally, and eventually, globally, Bevz will need to constantly educate these stores and build trust with them.
To bring this innovation to life, Bevz has to have partnerships across the entire industry.
First, Bevz has to sell to and build trust with convenience stores, which are the core customers. Secondly, Bevz needs to build partnerships and integrations with the e-commerce and delivery companies, like DoorDash and Uber – Bevz is the furthest along in this area with five integrations in progress. Lastly, Bevz needs to work closely with small and large snack and drink brands and distributors, to ensure stores can easily order and offer the right products and the right time to their customers.
Bevz already has partnerships with key players across the entire industry but will continue to add more partners and build on current partnerships over the coming years.
