Swill, on-demand booze delivery expanding to BK this summer

Swill originated out of a coworking business started in a Manhattan WeWork, called Vendor.ly. The team distributed snacks directly to people’s desks thoughout the day.

“We found out that people really like Diet Coke and Gummy Bears in the afternoon,” said Neil Prendergast, and that it has since pivoted to become a ‘Seamless for booze.’ He spoke about the company at the most recent Brooklyn Tech Meetup, which took place at Huge last week.

When Prendergast joined the company he said he argued hard to begin setting up a Brooklyn distribution network. The company serves as a one-stop go between for liquor stores that already offer free delivery. A customer doesn’t even need to know where their nearest store is. All they need to know is that there apartment is in a Swill delivery area.

Prendergast says store owners in Brooklyn are more tech savvy than longstanding stores in Manhattan, so store acquisition has been easier here. The team hopes to begin opening deliveries in Brooklyn in mid-summer, and should cover everything from Williamsburg and Bushwick on down to Park Slope and Bay Ridge.

Also at Brooklyn Tech Meetup, the presentation by Manhattan’s Field Lens seemed to really capture the crowd’s interest. Field Lens is a way to enable the many companies, contractors and subcontractors that collaborate on building projects to share information with each other, including, critically, images tagged to their locations in the project. The app includes plans, ways to take photos, videos, internal company privacy settings and other features that make it easier to follow a large building project.

One impressive feature: if you need to document something and you’ve lost service for whatever reason, the app will simply keep track of your post and hold it in the queue until service is regained.

Dos Owls also presented its Android powered portable projection and sound system, the ODIN. Its Kickstarter campaign launched last week. Right now, they are available for pre-order through the crowdfunding campaign for $495, but they have an MSRP of $845. The device effectively works like a tablet that can shoot its screen up on the wall, getting Internet access from wifi or data via Bluetooth.

All the companies in this story are Manhattan based, though a staffer at Dos Owls told us that we might see the company crossing the river before long. Its founder is a Bed-Stuy resident.