JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

A higher availability of alcohol is associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption and harm. Alcohol is increasingly accessible online, with rapid delivery offered by a third-party driver. Remote delivery and online availability are important from a public health policy perspective but to date, relatively little research has explored the availability of alcohol offered by online platforms.

Objective:

This cross-sectional exploratory study aimed to describe the availability of alcohol on the third-party platform Deliveroo within London, England.

Methods:

We extracted the number of outlets offering alcohol on Deliveroo for each London borough and converted these into crude rates per 1,000 population (18-64 years). Outlets were grouped as those which exclusively sold alcohol, off-licenses, and premium outlets. We calculated Pearson’s correlation coefficients to explore the association between borough’s crude rate of outlets per 1,000 population and average Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2019 scores. The number of outlets which also sold tobacco/e-cigarettes were also extracted and we explored whether online outlets had an associated premise.

Results:

We identified 4,277 outlets offering alcohol on Deliveroo across London, with crude rates ranging between 0.22 per 1,000 population aged 18-64 to 2.29 per borough. Most outlets exclusively sold alcohol (72.2%), and the vast majority of these outlets also sold tobacco/e-cigarettes (95.6%). Most outlets exclusively offering alcohol delivered across multiple boroughs, unlike off-licenses and premium outlets, and several listed self-storage units as their associated premise. We found no significant relationship between borough IMD scores and crude rate of outlets per 1,000 population overall (P=.87) or by any outlet type: exclusively alcohol (P=.41), off-license (P=.58), and premium outlets (P=.18).

Conclusions:

Outlets offering alcohol on Deliveroo in London are common and are sometimes operating out of self-storage units that have policies prohibiting the storage of alcohol. This has implications for public health given the relationship between alcohol’s availability and consumption/harm. There is a need to ensure regulations for delivery are adequate for protecting children and vulnerable adults, and the Licensing Act 2003 may require modernization in the digital age. Future research exploring a relationship between online alcohol availability and deprivation is justified.