DRINKS Reviews

4.6

87% would recommend to a friend

(69 total reviews)
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Zac Brandenberg

96% approve of CEO

94% positive business outlook

DRINKS has an employee rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars, based on 69 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The DRINKS employee rating is 30% above average for employers within the Retail and wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

69 reviews
1.0
8 Nov 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fully remote with slightly better than average benefits (a home internet stipend and free wine, for example).

Cons

This review could be a novel, but we’ll focus on 3 areas… The workload and expectations for this position would be unmanageable even for a team of copywriters. Talks of daily content needs at a “brisk” pace immediately turned out to be 30, 40+ sends per week with multiple rounds of revisions and last-minute changes from marketing that should have been decided earlier. By the end of my first week I was logging on early and staying late just to approve content for the next day. Most of this seems to be the fault of marketing, although you wouldn’t know it because all accountability for this process has been shrugged onto the writer. Incorrect sale pricing? Prepare for a harshly worded note from the person who approved your source of information. Missed a comma? Expect to answer for it at 6:00 on a Friday. They want award-winning emails every time but have neither the time, strategy, or knowledge to help make it happen. The kicker? It’s an open secret. Members of the team welcomed me with warnings to preserve myself, not disagree with management, etc. Bringing up the issues internally did nothing either as my boss acknowledged multiple former writers who burned out/quit dealing with similar problems. Despite offering multiple solutions, her best advice was to stick with it and “eventually hire someone else for a turn on the treadmill.” Only after submitting my notice less than 2 months into the job did they find energy to make some changes, but do you trust a company who needs that big of a push to make a basic position livable?

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DRINKS Response
4y
Thank you for your review. You’ve given us a lot of information to help us meet our goal of delivering exceptional experiences for everyone working at, and with, DRINKS. We’re not perfect, and we’ll use your feedback to improve. We apologize that this position wasn’t a great fit for you and ultimately failed to meet your expectations. That’s never fun when that happens, and it’s something we try to ascertain early in the interview process. Jobs have to fit for both sides, employee and employer, and that clearly wasn’t the case here. As much as we valued your contribution at DRINKS, it’s ultimately a good thing that you discovered this wasn’t a match after just a few short weeks. We wish you the very best. DRINKS is a high-intensity business operating with a start-up mentality. We strive to hire employees that think like owners (and we compensate employees with stock options to ensure they have the opportunity to share in business growth). Sometimes that means that when we get into crunch time, like October-December each year, the work gets particularly demanding. Wine is a cyclical business, and promotions ramp up around the holidays. That said, we greatly value work-life balance at DRINKS. Everyone is currently full-time remote with no mandate to go into an office. Hours are flexible. Compensation and benefits are very generous for a small company. But, because we are still small, there are times – like in this case – where a job for multiple copywriters ends up on one employee’s desk. We don’t like that either – and never want anyone to burn out – but this is an unfortunate reality of hiring competitive talent in 2021. We are hiring multiple copywriters right now to meet the needs of our rapidly growing business. If you’ve gotten this far and have a passion for reaching consumers with informative, persuasive, creative, and occasionally witty copy, we’d love to chat with you.
2.0
11 Apr 2018

POOOOOR Leadership

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

SOME of the people were great. Mainly those in the trenches that are basically doing all the work. Free Parking + Free Gym+Free Lunch on Thursdays.

Cons

Leadership is terrible. CEO is incredibly pretentious (doesn't even look at the "lowly workers" nor greets anyone). Most in "high positions" here are complete "know it alls". Certain (director) positions are filled by incompetent individuals that are CLEARLY way in over their head. Also, it is extremely frustrating when almost all the inner-workings of the company is backwards. Always putting the cart ahead of the horse and then it's up the pee-ons to fix it later. If you're still there, get out while you can. This is a business that WILL NOT thrive in the future. It will likely be bought out at some point and the big boss will move on to his next venture.

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DRINKS Response
8y
Thank you for your review. We’re sorry that your time with DRINKS didn’t end well and we truly appreciate your feedback. Over the past few months our CEO has been tied up on many calls and has kept his door closed a lot. Those discussions are progressing steadily, and he will now have the opportunity to once again get more hands-on in the day-to-day management of the business (as opposed to being purely strategic). Your points about processes are well received. We are continually working on creating more efficient processes. There’s a balance between no meetings / small meetings and looping in way too many people. In this area we’re still experiencing growing pains, but we’ve recently gotten better and hopefully have hit our groove. We definitely need to do a much better job with exit interviews. I’m sorry we got it wrong with your exit; we will do better in the future.
2.0
3 Jan 2024

Better times

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

During my time at Drinks I enjoyed working with a good team, had good interactions with other departments and the benefits were good (base pay was below market however)

Cons

The vision sold by leadership just wasn’t there and has been declining for the last several years. There has been a ‘bait and switch’ mentality in several big events. The deal with Winc, which initially sounded like an acquisition, ended up being a selloff of a major part of the company. The purchase of Electriq appeared to have little investment from leadership, and let’s not forget the layoff Zoom meetings. There’s been a lot of hype for new projects that eventually fizzle away due to a lack of support from leadership. The company has put all its eggs in one basket.

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Glassdoor has 70 DRINKS reviews submitted anonymously by DRINKS employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if DRINKS is right for you.