Santé, the leading fintech platform for the wine and spirits industry, today announced $7.6 million led by Bonfire Ventures, along with Operator Collective, Y Combinator and Veridical Ventures. The company plans to use the funding to scale its sales teams and develop new products for grocers and other retailers with highly unique commercial operations.
Wine & Liquor Stores Problems: Complex Inventory & Regulations
Liquor and wine retailers face a unique set of challenges that standard retail software is unable to handle, ranging from complex regulations to tracking of specific vintages, state tax laws and age verification, and keg returns. Businesses must also navigate “break-pack” pricing, where a single SKU might be sold as a case, a six-pack, or a single bottle, requiring synchronized inventory updates. The industry is also burdened by heavy regulations and the need to manage diverse distributor relationships, requiring hours of manual data entry each week.
“After over a decade with Atlantic Systems, we switched to Santé, and it's transformed our operation. Ordering products used to take up so much of my time, but now I can create purchase orders in minutes and focus on my customers,” said Bobby Cahill, owner of Wine Cellar of Queens, one of the largest wine and spirit retailers in New York City
Sante's Solution: The First AI and Fintech Platform that Helps Retailers Grow
Santé solves this with a unified and purpose built platform for inventory, eCommerce, delivery management, marketing, reporting, and more, all backed with a proprietary AI suite that helps boost sales and save time. These key features have allowed Santé to become the fastest growing platform in the wine and spirits industry, with 400% growth in the last year, with hundreds of stores processing $500 million in annual card volume.
Key features include:
- AI-Powered Invoices: Scan invoices from distributors, automatically updating inventory levels and unit costs in minutes to eliminate manual data entry.
- Marketing Agent: Segments customers based on their purchase history, sending email & SMS campaigns when relevant products are restocked, put on promotion or included in tasting events at the shop
- Automated Ecommerce Cataloging: Auto generate SEO-optimized descriptions and images for thousands of wine, beer, and spirit SKUs
- Unified Delivery Integration: Consolidates orders from DoorDash, Uber Eats, GrubHub, and Instacart directly into the POS.
- Liquor-Specific Logic: Industry specific tools including automated bottle/keg tracking, vintage management, and complex “mix-and-match” case discounts.
- Mobile Inventory Counting: Mobile stock counting tools that make it easy for retailers to count their inventory without hiring a third party
- Smart Multi-Store Inventory: Seamless inventory transfers between multiple locations with predictive reordering
- Marketplace Sync: Real-time inventory syncing with high-conversion beverage platforms like Vivino, Wine-Searcher, and FrootBat, supercharging sales
“Wine and liquor retailers have been left behind by traditional POS and eCommerce companies,” said Santé CEO Darren Fike. “With the support of the top investors in vertical SaaS, we're excited to continue building the most effective platform for the wine and spirits industry while also expanding to support small business owners across similar verticals like convenience and local grocery stores.
“The liquor and grocery industry is massive but also incredibly complex, fragmented and regulated in every state, county and even city” said Tyler Churchill, Partner at Bonfire Ventures. “Santé is approaching this industry with the attention to detail necessary to deliver real, end-to-end value with AI. Store owners aren't simply getting another tool to track inventory. They are getting a companion technology platform that helps them run a stronger, more profitable business with ease. Santé customers are making more money, acting on more insights, and finding new ways to expand their businesses: one customer we spoke to decided to grow his store count by 2x solely because Sante made it possible and profitable.
To learn more about Santé, visit www.santehq.com.
About Santé
Santé is the complete operating system for wine and liquor stores, with receiving, e-commerce, delivery app management, marketing, and more in one platform. Santé helps these entrepreneurs generate more revenue with an AI-powered operating system, built for the modern era of retail. The company is backed by leading investors including Bonfire Ventures, along with Operator Collective, Y Combinator and Veridical Ventures. Learn more at www.santehq.com.
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