The Homa Files

TakeAway: Cheap beer is nothing new, but private label beer is not so common.

But now, Walgreens is introducing its line of Big Flats lager across 4,600 stores.

As if AmBev and MillerCoors didn’t have enough to worry about, there might be some more competition among those companies’ low-end offerings.

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Excerpted from brandchannel, “Walgreens Offers Private-Label Beer,” by Jennifer Sokolowsky, January 31, 2011

Drugstores are the place to go to get your cough drops and allergy tablets, and now they are the places to pick up another kind of medicine — the self-medicating kind found in alcoholic beverages.

Duane Reade is luring Brooklyn hipsters by offering high-end bottled beer and fresh beer on tap to go in Williamsburg.

Now Walgreens is going in a completely different direction: offering its own private-label beer at the low end of the price scale.

Quietly introduced in mid-December, Walgreens now offers Big Flats 1901 lager in more than 4,600 of the chain’s 7,655 locations, according to the Chicago Tribune. …

Big Flats 1901 may be labeled “premium brew,” but its price is anything but premium at about 50 cents a can, or $2.99 for a six-pack, though prices may vary by region. …

Walgreens is surely betting that those who come in looking for cheap beer will probably leave with something else as well — and that those who come in for something else just might not be able to resist leaving with some cheap beer. …

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This entry was posted on February 10, 2011 at 6:15 am and is filed under Mktg - Brands, Retailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.