One For the Road: An AI Assessment of Uber’s Challenges in the Failed Drizly Acquisition

When Uber gulped up Drizly in 2021, it seemed like a cocktail made in heaven. But fast forward to now, and it's an entirely different story: Uber's just announced they're shutting down the alcohol delivery service in March 2024.

So…what went wrong? 

Let's rewind and take a look at what the employees were saying, thanks to insights from Aniline.ai.

At first, things looked pretty rosy. Employees saw the Uber acquisition as a big pat on the back for Drizly. "Uber acquisition says something about the company's success," wrote one employee in an online review. 

But that didn’t last. As our AI dug deeper into employee reviews, we found that underneath that initial excitement, there was a degree of worry and uncertainty brewing. And it all appears to be oriented around one thing: communication, or rather, the lack of it.

Employees were left wondering, "What's next for us? How will our culture change? What happens to our jobs?" One Drizly employee summed it up well: "Acquisition by Uber leaves some uncertainty about where the company is headed." 

In simple terms, employees posting anonymously online gave a clear signal about being left in the dark. In the Aniline framework for employee perception, this reflects a lack of integrity. 

And that's not all. By applying natural language processing, a branch of artificial intelligence, to volumes of online employee narrative reviews, we found that employees weren't just feeling uncertain, they were also feeling let down by management. Employees shared that there were whispers of layoffs known by the higher-ups way before the rest of the team. As one employee put it, "Leadership knew layoffs were happening months before the wider company was informed."

The Aniline Integrity metric, which measures employee sentiment about the company's cultural DNA concerning trustworthiness, honesty, and commitment, shows a steep decline beginning in April 2023 when the layoff was abruptly announced in late March:

And if that wasn't enough, there was an overall feeling that the management didn't really care about the employees' welfare during this whole shake-up. Especially the customer experience team, whose benefits were being taken away according to this online narrative: "Drizly is currently moving through an acquisition with Uber and basically all of the customer experience team's benefits are being removed and Drizly doesn't seem to care." 

So, what could have been done differently? Naturally hindsight is 20/20, though employee signals were visible in real time, boiling down to avoidable communication breakdowns.

At the outset, Uber’s management could have chosen a more proactive approach with robust employee feedback. Priority should have been given to transparent communication detailing the roadmap of the acquisition, its implications, and the company’s strategic direction. This could have gone a long way toward calming nerves and building trust.

Next, leadership at Drizly could have instituted sincere measures to address uncertainty about job security, benefits, and preservation of the nurturing company culture at Drizly. An inclusive strategy could have mitigated employees’ anxieties, fostering feelings of belonging even amidst upheaval.

Finally, management at both Uber and Drizly missed the opportunity to involve employees in the transition process. Making them active participants rather than bystanders of high-level decisions would have instigated a sense of ownership, engagement, and motivation –  making colleagues feel heard, valued, and most importantly, part of the journey.

The Uber-Drizly story underscores the impact of harnessing employee insights. These data points should have been noticed, and Aniline’s generative AI applied to make inferences about the progress of the merger. Aniline’s unique approach to understanding the collective voice of employees in real time helps to elevate performance by revealing what drives success, or in this case the difference between a successful merger and a turbulent, expensive, short-lived combination.

Want to Learn More?

Explore Aniline’s platform to learn more, and contact us to learn how Aniline’s comprehensive employee review data can benefit your organization.

By James Marple

james@aniline.ai