What It Takes to Claim the $40 Billion Alcohol Opportunity

The numbers are hard to dispute. A total of 7 in 10 young adults have discovered alcohol brands online that they couldn't easily purchase. Then 1 in 5 Americans don't even know buying alcohol online is even possible. A recent survey from Drinks Holdings, Inc., estimates the resulting discovery-to-purchase gap at $40 billion.Closing that gap requires infrastructure. The honest question for retailers is: whose infrastructure?The Trade-Off Behind Marketplace ConvenienceThe industry's instinct is to lean on embedded marketplaces like frictionless third-party platforms that slot alcohol into existing shopping journeys. One can make a legitimate case for them. These platforms bring scale, established demand and reach that most independent and regional retailers cannot replicate on their own. They move product, but solving the distribution problem is not the same as building a business.Every transaction that runs through a third-party marketplace generates two things: A sale and a customer signal. The retailer gets the sale. Meanwhile, the platform keeps the signal: The purchase behavior, the browsing history, the preference data that tells you who this customer is, what they want and how to reach them again. Do that at volume — across a category as high-frequency as alcohol — and you have handed someone else the raw material for understanding your customers better than you do.That trade-off is manageable when marketplaces are one channel among several. It becomes structural when they are the primary way you meet digital demand.What Owning the Customer Actually UnlocksWhen a retailer invests in owning the customer relationship directly, they gain control over the margin and data that drive long-term growth.First, the margin picture improves. Marketplace fees represent a tax on every transaction, and it compounds across volume. Redirecting even a portion of that demand through a direct channel converts margin pressure into investable capital. That capital funds what the marketplace was providing — traffic. Retailers know how to build direct audiences with advertising, email and loyalty. The margin recovered from platform fees becomes the budget for doing it.In addition, the data picture improves over time. A retailer who owns the transaction owns the customer dataset. That dataset drives down acquisition costs. It enables personalization that increases basket size and purchase frequency. It lets brands reach your audience in your environment and creates a revenue stream that has nothing to do with moving cases. The consumer who buys from you directly is more valuable than the consumer who buys from you through a platform — and they get more valuable the longer you retain them.The embedded marketplace model makes this flywheel structurally difficult to build because the retailer only captures the transaction, while the platform captures the signal, which compounds over time. Building Demand Instead of Renting ItNone of this means abandoning marketplace distribution, particularly for retailers without an established digital presence. High-volume platforms bring demand that takes time to develop independently. The strategic question is whether you are using that volume as a bridge while building the owned channels that give you leverage — or using it as a permanent solution that quietly forecloses the alternative.Alcohol commerce will go more digital, but who will own it when it does? Ownership in this context is not about geography or channel. Rather, it is about data, margin and the ability to reach your customer on your own terms. The retailers building that capability now are becoming less reliant on marketplace volume. That is the difference between capturing an opportunity and building a business.About the AuthorJon Lowen is co-founder and co-CEO of Surfside, a retail media infrastructure company that makes independent and regional retailers addressable to national brand advertisers. Before Surfside, he held leadership roles in digital media and ad technology.

What It Takes to Claim the $40 Billion Alcohol Opportunity

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