New Haven, you’ll now be able to have alcoholic beverages delivered like apizza. Porter21, a locally owned and operated liquor-delivery service based in greater Hartford, has just expanded to the Elm City, serving three ZIP codes in the downtown area with plans to accommodate more.
The company works with local liquor stores as partners, which process and deliver the orders within a 60-minute time frame. The transaction to purchase alcoholic beverages takes place between the customer and licensed retailer (the partner store); Porter21 acts as the conduit and provides the e-commerce site for customers to search and order from the stores’ inventory.
Porter21’s founder, Ankit Harpaldas, grew up in central Connecticut and returned to the area after nearly three years in the financial industry in New York, where he worked after graduating from Philadelphia’s Drexel University in 2012. Inspired by entrepreneurs in his family — including liquor store owners — he decided to create an e-commerce site that would assist owners with sales beyond the physical store.
“I understand the struggles — they don’t have time to maintain a website every day, so this problem we’re solving is something I can relate to,” he said. “Liquor hasn’t been tapped into properly in terms of e-commerce…The gap missing was this on-demand delivery model. If someone wants it, they can have it now, not wait 3 days to have it shipped.”
Porter21 (porter21.com) launched in November in Hartford County, and now services Hartford proper and more than a dozen surrounding towns west and south of the city, thanks to its affiliation with several local stores. The company is also looking to potentially work with stores in towns east of the river, like Manchester and Glastonbury. “We’re making sure they can handle the volume,” he said. “They must meet the expectation of 60 minutes or less.”
Liquor prices are set by the partner stores and are comparable to what you’ll find on the shelves; there’s no additional customer charge for delivery. Porter21 works with a licensing fee model, charging partner stores an agreed-upon flat rate to use the delivery service.
At the moment, Porter21 is the only liquor delivery service serving the region. Ultra, a national company with partner stores throughout the country, launched in Hartford County in August but halted its operations in the state a few months later. In an email, founder Aniket Shah said the company has “paused” its Hartford alcohol delivery and “[is] looking at all options to restart our operations soon there, as we consider it to be a very important market.”
New Haven is Porter21’s first big expansion out of Hartford. Between the Yale community and a population of young residents, “I think [the city] is going to respond great,” Harpaldas said. “For a service like this, it made sense to go to New Haven, which has a tech-savvy clientele.”
Porter21 remains mindful of liquor laws, however, and Harpaldas says for that reason, he doesn’t want to be known as a service that targets college students. The service and its partner stores take all the necessary steps to sell alcoholic beverages legally. Customers must verify their age on the website at the time of the order, and drivers must card upon delivery and can refuse to leave the order if the person can’t produce a valid ID — or if they appear to be too intoxicated. “We’re not here to just sell liquor to whoever, anyone,” he said. “We want a good clean business.”
The service is also only available during liquor stores’ legal hours of operation; Porter21 will stop taking orders at 8:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 4:30 p.m. on Sundays, as stores must close by 9 p.m. and 5 p.m. respectively. All transactions must be completed by the closing hour; if the delivery person cannot get there by then, they’ll provide options for delivery at a future time.
Harpaldas says he hopes Porter21 will continue to expand throughout Connecticut, possibly next to Fairfield and Stamford, and is working on plans to grow outside of the state. “Store owners have to do everything and anything to stay ahead,” he said. “There’s so much competition…it’s going to help. I’ve already seen the effect it’s had. Store owners can start delivering, but do they have a website, a marketing company? We’re tapping into a network, a clientele that they might have never had.”
