April 23, 2021, Financial Post
Bottle service: Canada lags in e-commerce alcohol sales, but that is changing
“People want new products, it’s all about discovery,’ says Jennifer Stasiewich, the founder and CEO of Somm, an app that pairs consumers with wine. “You want to access things that you can’t get at your local big box. You think about all those great dinners you had when you asked your server, where can I get the following wine? They disappear into the back and they come back with the name of a guy on a piece of paper who’s the wine agent that you’re apparently supposed to call to get this special bottle.” There had to be a better way, and Stasiewich, whose career to this point has mostly been spent in the finance world — institutional equity research at the Bank of Nova Scotia, private equity at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and algorithmic trading at TD Securities — found one after signing up for the introductory Court of Master Sommeliers program. Initially, the idea was to create a website that would help people choose a wine on their own, but that quickly morphed into a marketplace as well after the pandemic hit.
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