The pub landlord’s worst nightmare …

Bar in a Duane Reade supermarket, Brooklyn

The supermarket with a bar it it!

“One corner of the Duane Reade store on Bedford Avenue in the Williamsburg neighborhood [of Brooklyn] has Fire Island Lighthouse Ale and eight other beers on tap, with growlers — refillable glass bottles — lining the walls. Uniformed clerks-cum-beer-experts fill the growlers and conduct tastings …”

With a fair number of off-licences in the UK having been offering drink in take-away containers for many years now, surely this has already happened in a supermarket here? And if not, surely it will be happening soon? And what then for the (already dubious) claim that “the pub is the only place you can get proper draft real ale …”

0 thoughts on “The pub landlord’s worst nightmare …

  1. Here in the states nearly every brewery serves take out beer in this style, the container is generally called a Growler. I believe people collect the containers.

        1. Well – if you’re ever in London get in touch! They’re from the Front St Brewery, Wilmington, North Carolina – collectors’ item?

  2. Mudgie – the LYH brand lives on in Newcastle with one of the Head of Steam chain pubs bearing this name. Take out cask beer is still one of Tony Brookes’ major campaigns. To be honest I don’t understand why more pubs don’t do it.

  3. Heh. That’s the Duane Reade’s that got the Billyburg Hipsters all bunched up – it even made the Observer here a month or so back. Never seen it in any other DR’s in NYC, but a number of stores fill growlers – Whole Foods notably do it, and places like Bierkraft a bit further south in Brooklyn. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “64 ounces of American Beeeer…”

  4. Duane Reade is actually a chain of pharmacies/drug stores, rather than a supermarket. Think CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid, etc. I think places like Lloyds or Superdrug would be the UK equivalent, no? However, Whole Foods, which is a bona fide supermarket/grocery, has started growler service in some areas.

  5. In the same vein as Alan, a local beer distributor, here in Albany, NY, has taps to fill growlers, and has for quite a long time.

    A more unusual occurance, is that, a local grocery market is now allowing you to “make a six pack”, or by beer by the single bottle, from a number of manufacturers. Their offerings are good, for their niché.

      1. Even better… toothpaste, a bottle of London Pride, Guinness FES, Stone IPA, Delirium Nocturnum, two tomatoes, a can of tuna and floor cleaner.

  6. Apart from anything else, this is a great idea from the ecological point of view – re-usable growlers are so much more green that cans or non-deposit bottles.

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