More grocery stores want you to sip some suds as you shop
Or some wine, or even a cocktail
If you thought cupholders on grocery carts were made for coffee, think again.
In a growing number of Milwaukee-area stores, that cupholder is suited to carrying a pint of beer. (You’re on your own with a glass of wine, which some stores also offer.)
Whole Foods in Milwaukee and Wauwatosa; G. Groppi Food Market
in Bay View; and a select number of Metro Markets and Fresh Thyme stores have bars to help fuel the shopping experience.
Tim Eichinger, brewer and co-owner of Black Husky Brewing, will grab a beer at the store if he has a long shopping list.
Oh, who are we kidding? He’ll grab one if he doesn’t have a list.
“It’s multitasking,” Eichinger said. “Shopping and doing your drinking at the same time is just efficiency.”
Eichinger is only partially joking. The Metro Market in Shorewood, which opened its bar two years ago, has become one of his favorite hangouts.
The Shorewood Metro Market, 4075 N. Oakland Ave., has eight beers on tap and six wines available at its bar.
“We’re more of a beer bar,” said the store’s general manager, Tony Kuchinsky.
Roundy’s, which operates the Metro Market stores for parent company Kroger, calls them “grocerants” — grocery stores with bars slinging beer, wine and cocktails to sip while you shop or eat.
“If you’re dining in, you might as well enjoy a glass of wine while you’re there,” said James Hyland, a Roundy’s spokesman.
The Shorewood Metro Market’s bar is anchored next to the store’s prepared foods area. Kuchinsky likes to take advantage of seasonal sports events, like March Madness, to give that corner of the store a sports-bar ambiance — even adding a variety of wings to the prepared foods station.
The concept is spreading. When Roundy’s renovated the Metro Market at 1123 N. Van Buren St., this year, it included a tap beer and wine station inside. It did the same earlier this year with a former Pick N’ Save at 6950 W. State St. in Wauwatosa. The bar has been well-received, said store manager Garrett Mueller.
Mueller looks for a steady crowd on weekends, but he isn’t totally surprised when someone comes to the bar at 9 a.m., when it opens. The State St. Metro Market has seven beers on tap.
Whole Foods has always encouraged shoppers to sip a brew while they grab their grub. The Austin, Texas-based grocery chain put a bar in the center of its east side store, 2305 N. Prospect Ave., in 2006. It put a larger and more prominent bar — called Tosa Tavern — at the front of its Wauwatosa location, 11105 W. Burleigh St., when that store opened in 2016. The Wauwatosa location also sells growlers.
“We try to make our stores a community center, and sharing in either beer, wine or spirits lends itself to community feeling,” said Chris Kopperud, a regional executive director with Whole Foods.
More than 115 Whole Foods stores across the country have alcohol available during shopping.
“If you’re having a beer or two while you’re shopping, you’re staying longer,” said Phil Kuhl, craft beer and cider specialist for Breakthru Beverage Group, a distributor in Hartland.
On a Thursday afternoon at G. Groppi Food Market, 1441 E. Russell Ave., the small bar is nearly full.
This is nothing, said Cass Gleisner, liquor department manager. Regulars storm the place at dinnertime, saying they’ll “have one and go.”
Groppi’s bar opened in 2006, about the same time Whole Foods debuted its east side location. The choices at Groppi’s are many: eight beers on tap; five red wines; five white wines; a rosé and a bubbly. Or, if you wish, order a cocktail.
Grabbing a drink at the grocery store has a benefit beyond turning an errand into an adventure.
Drink prices tend to be lower than in a typical restaurant or tavern. Beers that cost $5 and $7 elsewhere are often discounted at store bars.
At Whole Foods, for example, pints start at $4, a deal for a craft beer. On Thursday, pints at the Tosa Tavern are $3. Other days, the bar is open for craftbrewery tap takeovers.
The reason for the lower prices? Profit isn’t the primary reason a store serves alcohol, Whole Foods’ Kopperud said. Stores tend to work off the same margin for draft beer as they do for the packaged beer they sell.
“Most of our taps are partnerships with local breweries or local producers. It’s really a form of promotion with them,” he said.
Another place for drinking
Shopping with a drink in hand doesn’t help the state’s binge-drinking reputation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention names Wisconsin as the second drunkest state, behind North Dakota. The agency found that 24.5% of adults report binge or heavy drinking, well above the comparable national share of 18%.
“In light of this, it is hard to think it a positive to have more places that serve alcohol, further desensitizing young people to alcohol use and tempting those who would not even consider having a drink while shopping for bread and milk,” said Steven Miller, a licensed professional counselor and substance abuse counselor in Waukesha.
“Also, it would seem this would increase the number of people driving under the influence of alcohol. How would one determine if they are .08 or below?” he added in an email. “In reality, that does not matter; any amount of alcohol consumed impairs one’s ability to operate a vehicle. On the other hand, one does not have to drink just because the alcohol is being served, and one could just take their children to a grocery store that does not serve alcohol so they would not be exposed.”
Still, if a store is going to have a bar, it probably doesn’t hurt to add a few bar touches such as sports on TV, like the Metro Market in Shorewood. Groppi holds beer classes. The Tosa Tavern hosts trivia contests each Thursday night.
The setting and the popularity of trivia in the grocery store surprised Ryan Wickens, owner of Quizmaster Trivia.
“My first reaction was one of, ‘I’m not so sure this is going to work,’ ”Wickens said, “But it’s much more popular than I ever expected it to be.”
It’s so popular that trivia night has spread to four Chicago-area Whole Foods.
“I like to think that once people are in the bar area, they’re drinking and they’re with friends and they kind of forget they’re in a grocery store,” Wickens said.