When it comes to home delivery, now it's anything goes. Three current and former AFL footballers have started a liquor delivery service that aims to save you the effort of going to the local bottle shop – and that's just the beginning.

By TOLI PAPADOPOULOS

A year ago, former Melbourne footballer Joel Macdonald started up his own liquor delivery service. Ten thousand deliveries later, Macdonald says his business is completely legal, despite numerous challenges by the local police.

“It’s an interesting one because part of our business model is we’re just a courier service for bottle shops,” Macdonald said.

Launched in July last year, Liquorun was founded by Macdonald and Demons teammates James Strauss and Rohan Bail.

The idea was inspired by a conversation between the three mates on their way home from an interstate match. Unhappy with the inconvenience of going to the bottle shop, Macdonald and his teammates believed a delivery service would shake up the market.

“We’re trying to build a business where at the touch of a button you can get anything delivered and we had to start with something, so we chose alcohol,” he says.

Liquorun essentially acts as a courier service, gathering its supplies from the Railway Hotel in Windsor. The Railway Hotel has a 24-hour liquor licence, though Liquorun stops delivering after 11pm.

For a long time Liquorun operated without a liquor licence, but after several attempts by Prahran police to shut the business down, Macdonald says he decided to get one.

“I had to plead our case … we were arguing we were just transporting from A to B and the bottle shop was the one participating in the sales of liquor,” he says.

“We got a liquor licence at the end of the day. It wasn’t so much the legal side of things they were concerned about – they were concerned about perception and how an alcohol delivery service looks.”

Macdonald says he opted for a renewable limited liquor licence. This licence allows him to supply liquor in circumstances where the scale and scope of the supply is substantially restricted or limited. Supplying alcohol may be limited in a number of ways including the range of products, customers, trading hours, size of premises and means of delivery.

The usual licence holders are typically off-site caterers, bed and breakfasts and internet vendors. There are no set trading hours for this type of licence, but Liquorun does not deliver past 11pm.

“Someone’s probably been in a situation where they need alcohol late at night, but that’s not really our market for a lot of reasons – as well as commercial reasons,” he says.

Currently, Liquorun is only available to those living in Melbourne's inner suburbs. To order alcohol, users must register online with their address. Once Liquorun has confirmed the customer is in its area, there is a choice of a multitude of products, including top-shelf spirits, champagne and wine.

A minimum $30 spend is required, with a delivery fee added to that. Macdonald says the average delivery time is about 23 minutes.

In order to prevent underage users, Liquorun requires the customer to key in their driver's licence number, which is then cross-checked by the driver on delivery.

“I think we’ve done almost 10,000 deliveries now and we’ve had one underage incident where we didn’t deliver the alcohol … so I’m pretty proud to say the ID checks work,” Macdonald says.

Head of Behavioural Studies at Monash University Dr Kerry O’Brien says an alcohol delivery service could lead to increases in consumption.

“Most of the evidence suggests that availability of alcohol increases consumption and that’s associated with more risky drinking,” he says.

“Some of the research suggests that young people are pre drinking – they load up on cheap alcohol at home and then go out drinking … and if that’s through buying cheaper discount alcohol that’s delivered to your home, then that’s increasing the access, so therefore it’s likely it will result in some greater harms.”

Still, Macdonald does not see Liquorun as just an alcohol delivery service. Earlier in the year, Macdonald partnered with takeaway restaurant chains Huxtaburger and Fonda.

He hopes to expand his business into a courier delivery service, partnering with other retail businesses such as Officeworks. Officeworks currently offers same day delivery or next day delivery on goods and services, charging a fee of $5.95.

He says his business will differentiate itself from standard services by charging competitive rates and delivering products within 60 minutes.

“Because our model is crowd-sourced we’re able to charge rates that are pretty competitive to next-day delivery,” he says.

He’s also planning on expanding his business to Sydney where he hopes a trial run will take place with Coles. The business will launch a smartphone app called Swift as well as a service that allows the customer to change their delivery location to somewhere other than their home.

“The new app will allow the consumer the choice to have products dropped wherever they are on Earth, and the courier will come straight to them. So we’re pretty excited about that.

“Swift is going to be the next FedEx of our city.”