Let the drinking games begin.
Drizly, a mobile app that allows people to order booze to their door using their smartphones, has scored another $2.5 million in funding to fuel its fast-paced expansion.
The money, from a group of investors including Gary Vaynerchuk of Vayner RSE, is on top of a $2.3 million fund-raising round earlier this year, which helped the upstart gain a foothold in New York and Chicago after launching in Boston last year.
Drizly, which started doing business in Manhattan and Brooklyn earlier this year, is moving into the Hamptons over Memorial Day weekend — just in time for backyard BBQ season, The Post has learned.
The coming expansion will also include Los Angeles and two other cities over the next two months — doubling its current operations, CEO Nicholas Rellas told The Post.
“We are moving very quickly,” Rellas said.
The 24-year-old entrepreneur isn’t only the one vying to deliver the most buzz — literally.
In New York, Drizly already competes with Minibar, which started making to deliveries to Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens earlier this year.
So far this year, at least five new apps promising to drop off alcohol on-demand at people’s doorsteps have popped up in a move by enterprising business graduates to capitalize on a glaring gap in the home-delivery business.
“Our generation wants things efficiently and quickly,” said Roddy Radnia, 24, of Nestdrop, which plans to start delivering booze in Los Angeles this month.
“Amazon just wasn’t delivering certain things we wanted” to include alcohol, said Radnia, who received his MBA from Babson College.
“We started the company while I was still in school,” said Rellas, who founded Drizly with two at pals Boston College, where he graduated with degrees in finance and corporate reporting in 2012.
Unlike Amazon, which often delivers items from its own inventory, alcohol delivery upstarts are mere middleman that connect consumers to local retailers.
A customer’s vodka order may still come from his or her neighborhood wine store but it could also come from further afield, depending on which store has the order in stock.
Drizly and other app makers receive a monthly licensing fee from the liquor stores who make the sales. Some apps also charge a flat delivery fee to the consumer, usually between $4 to $6.
The relatively low cost and few barriers to entry — just an app and a sales team in most cases — has entrepreneurs competing to be the Seamless of spirits.
When Drizly and Nestdrop start delivering in LA over the next few weeks, they will join Saucey, which launched in that city in mid-May.
Nestdrop plans to operate free of charge for the near future — neither consumers nor retailers will pay a fee — in an effort to “build the brand,” Radnia said.
While Saucey is also free to consumers, Drizly plans to charge a $5 delivery fee in Los Angeles but not in New York.
Chicago has also been besieged by eager app entrepreneurs. Starting this year, Chicagoans can choose from Vulu, Drinkfly or Drizly to deliver their whiskey.