Scotch, an all-in-one operating platform built for liquor retailers, announced it has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by VMG Partners, with participation from First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, and Toba Capital. The Denver-based company has also surpassed a $1 billion annual run rate in gross payment volume and plans to use the new funding to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and go-to-market teams, and scale its AI-enabled operating system across the United States.
Liquor retail is part of the $250 billion beverage alcohol industry and remains one of the last major specialty retail categories reliant on aging technology infrastructure. Many existing point-of-sale and inventory management systems were developed decades ago, remain largely on-premise, and require extensive manual processes. Scotch was built as a cloud-native, AI-first platform designed specifically to address the operational complexity of liquor retail.
The company is led by CEO Jake Bolling and CRO Kevin Hodges, who previously co-founded Skupos, a technology company serving convenience stores. The leadership team also includes CTO Dan Chen, who spent more than a decade in the liquor industry and previously served as CTO of Drizly prior to its acquisition by Uber for more than $1 billion.
Scotch’s platform automates a range of operational workflows, including invoice reconciliation, cost change detection, SKU standardization, deal sheet matching, and analytics. By reducing manual work, the company says retailers can improve margins, pricing accuracy, inventory visibility, capital efficiency, and operational speed.
The company has signed and onboarded several large independent liquor retailers across the country, including The Liquor Store of Jackson Hole, Big Bear Wine & Liquor, Corkdorks, and Everest Spirits Superstore. Scotch says its platform is designed to support some of the most operationally complex businesses in the category and is helping drive modernization in an industry that has historically seen limited technology innovation.
KEY QUOTES:
“Enterprise retailers face massive operational complexity, with many carrying anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 SKUs sourced from more than 30 distributors. COVID-era demand exposed the limits of manual, legacy systems, and as growth normalized, retailers were left with tighter margins, macro-driven pricing volatility and flat category growth. Retailers can no longer afford manual ordering, mispriced SKUs or hidden inventory; they need intelligent automation that streamlines workflows and allows them to focus on customer service, not IT.”
Jake Bolling, Co-Founder and CEO, Scotch
“Scotch has allowed us to unify all of our revenue streams in one place. It’s boosted our productivity and, importantly, taken away the day-to-day headaches around managing our business.”
Joey McDonald, General Manager, Sinkers Beverages
“Liquor retailers have been left out of the technology revolution for far too long, stifled by the complexity of scaling an efficient operation in the three-tier system. Scotch has already built a deeply resonant product that customers love, and VMG’s deep relationships across consumer brands, operators and technology leaders position us to accelerate their growth as they bring an AI-enabled modern operating system to tens of thousands of retailers.”
Carle Stenmark, General Partner, VMG Partners
