Thanks to these HBCU grads, the first Black-owned alcohol delivery service is here to change the game

Navarr Grevious and Mikael Pyles are both HBCU graduates and fraternity brothers. The two are the founders of the first Black-owned alcohol delivery service known as QuikLiq. The platform provides room for customers to buy beer, wine, and spirit beverages from the comfort of their homes via their digital device and have them delivered to them.

“QuikLiq is a tech-forward digital marketplace that provides our customers with access to the best selection of wine, beer, and spirits, right from the comfort of their homes,” the company’s website says.

“By partnering with the premier alcohol retailers along Miami Beach and throughout the US, we have set out to enhance the way our customers and retail partners interact through digital engagement. With just a click, we are bringing the essence of Miami Beach and all the great vibes that come with it, right to your home. ”

Grevious and Pyles first met while attending Clark Atlanta University back in the early 2010s and have since remained business partners. Their company currently operates only in Miami, Florida but plans to expand to the State of Georgia soon.

Grevious functions as the CEO of the company. Prior to co-founding QuikLiq, he worked for years at Deloitte, one of the biggest auditing and accounting firms in the world. He also worked for a top finance and accounting recruiter for a collection of fortune 100 companies. Aside from his outstanding career performance, Grevious has a master’s degree in Accounting from Clark Atlanta University.

Pyles, on the other hand, is a real estate broker for a boutique Manhattan firm. He has managed a $400 million portfolio and earned many awards as an Assistant Buyer at Target Corporation’s corporate headquarters, according to HBCUConnect.

Pyles serves on Quikliq as its President and Chief Strategy Officer of the company. He also has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Supply Chain Management.

In recent times, the coronavirus pandemic has shuttered restaurants and bars, sending consumers to e-commerce platforms. In the alcohol industry, this has affected the way suppliers, distributors, and retailers do business.

In 2019 when QuikLiq was beginning to make a name for itself, Grevious spoke about how the company wants to make ordering alcohol as easy and convenient as it is to order food, groceries, among others. “We all lead extremely busy lives, so anything we can do to save time and energy is a huge value-add. With the emergence of countless consumption-based mobile apps that make it easy to receive almost any product or service in minutes, we felt there was a serious void for this sort of service in the alcohol industry, and we decided to do something about it,” Grevious was quoted by VoyageATL in 2019.

The two HBCU grads, who had then started developing a powerful and creative Responsible Drinking Campaign, said in years to come, they “anticipate providing access to not only larger Distilleries/Breweries/Vineyard, but small domestic and international brands that are not able to compete on a large scale but are hometown favorites.”