booze

Target Goes After Costco, Trader Joe’s With New $5 Wines

Target Goes After Costco, Trader Joe’s With New $5 Wines

All around the country, thrifty wine drinkers pop into their local Trader Joe’s for a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck wine, or pack up their massive Costco trolley with some Kirkland Signature vino. But Chuck and Kirk have a new competitor for that discount drink dollar: Target, which has just unveiled its own line of $5 wines. [More]

Costco’s Bottom Line Gets A Boon From Store-Brand Booze

Costco’s Bottom Line Gets A Boon From Store-Brand Booze

When times are tough, it’s generally a very bad idea to seek out hope in a bottle, but don’t tell that to Costco. Brisk sales of the warehouse club’s store-brand liquor and wine are helping make up for Costco’s lower-than-expected retail receipts. [More]

Caleb Sommerville

America’s Liquor Cabinets Are Seeing A Lot Of Action

If you’ve been heading for your liquor cabinet more often than the beer fridge lately, you’re not alone: For the seventh year in a row, the spirits industry chipped away at beer’s market share. [More]

(Travelin' Librarian)

Starbucks Ends Boozy ‘Evenings’ Menu At 439 Locations

Turns out that people want coffee at coffee shops and beer and wine at other places. Eighteen months after Starbucks expanded its “Evenings” menu of booze and small bites, the company plans to pull the plug on the offering.  [More]

ShockinglyTasty

New Law Lets New Yorkers Buy Booze At Bars, Restaurants Before Noon On Sundays

New Yorkers, rejoice: you will finally be able to order a mimosa at brunch without waiting for the stroke of noon. [More]

Chipotle Now Giving Away Free Booze At Some Midwest Locations

Chipotle Now Giving Away Free Booze At Some Midwest Locations

Free burritos, a loyalty program, and constant reassurances that its food is safe hasn’t exactly been enough for Chipotle to win back customers following very public foodborne illness outbreaks. Now the fast-casual restaurant is taking another approach to bringing customers in the door: giving out free booze — at least in the Midwest.  [More]

johndegree

Pennsylvania Finally Putting An End To Weird Wine Laws

After nearly a century of having some of the strangest restrictions on the sale of beer, wine, and booze in the country, Pennsylvania’s rules on alcohol sales are about to get slightly less byzantine. [More]

Zeetz Jones

Delta Flight Attendant Charged With Sneaking 1,500 Mini Liquor Bottles To Sell On Craigslist

According to the police in Memphis, TN, when a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines left work, she would sometimes pick up some mini liquor bottles from the plane and bring them home. Taking a few bottles every day really adds up, and ultimately she has been charged with taking 1,500 bottles –– not to drink, but to sell on Craigslist. [More]

Fire At Will [Photography]

The Global Booze Market Shrank For The First Time In 10 Years

In an about-face from the previous 10 years, the world collectively put down its pints, shots, cocktails, and wine glasses in 2015, with a 0.7% drop in the global booze market. [More]

Fire At Will [Photography]

Kroger Wants Alcohol Companies To Pick Up The Tab For Its New Booze Organization Plan

After decades of sticking with its organization system in stores, Kroger has a new plan for how it decides which booze brands go on which shelf, and how prominently each one is displayed. Instead of relying on “category captains” from big names like Anheuser-Busch InBev and Diageo to suggest how wine, liquor, and beer are organized in stores, the grocer wants alcohol companies to pay a privately held distributor to make those display decisions. [More]

.sanden.

8 States With The Strangest Alcohol Laws

What’s the first thing you do to prepare for a trip to another state? After finalizing your packing list, looking up the law of the land should be on your list — especially if you’re planning on drinking any beer, wine, or liquor while you’re there. [More]

Taco Bell’s New Cantina Restaurants Will Serve Up Booze, Tapas

Taco Bell’s New Cantina Restaurants Will Serve Up Booze, Tapas

As we reported many months ago, Taco Bell has been prepping a booze-serving location in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. That store opens this week, and the company says it’s just the start of a plan to serve up more adult fare through a new “Cantina” version of the fast food mainstay. [More]

Chicago Target Could Be Company’s First To Serve Alcohol To Shoppers

Chicago Target Could Be Company’s First To Serve Alcohol To Shoppers

Who needs to tote around a cup of coffee or soft drink while browsing the aisles of their local big box retailer when they could have a glass of wine in hand instead? While shopping and drinking can certainly be a dangerous combination for some people (not myself, of course), that could be the next step for Target. [More]

Craft Breweries Adding Booze To Root Beer Because Why Not?

Craft Breweries Adding Booze To Root Beer Because Why Not?

Either way you look at it — adding booze to root beer or adding root beer to booze — it’s a combination that makes sense: Root beer is delicious, people like drinking alcoholic beverages, so why not have a hard root beer? One craft brewery has already netted itself a national deal with major partners in the brewing industry after developing a boozy root beer that’s become quite popular. [More]

(Meneer Dijk)

Study: Alcohol Advertising Grew 400% In 40 Years — But Americans Aren’t Drinking More

Since 1971, advertisers have churned out more and more content dedicated to pushing alcohol in its various forms. But just because we might see a galloping horse promoting beer in slow motion or a fun gang carrying a cooler of malt beverages on a beach every time we turn on the TV, computer or sit staring at a subway ad, that doesn’t mean Americans are drinking more booze than we did 40 years ago, according to a new study. [More]

(rayovolks)

Sorry, Indiana: Still No Carry-Out Booze Sales On Sunday After Bill Flounders

Indiana residents who were dreaming of picking up a bottle of wine or a few beers at their local grocery stores on a Sunday afternoon will have to stick to the other six days of the week, after support for a recent bill proposing to legalize carryout booze sales slowly drained away. [More]

(Andrew McDaniel)

From Guacamole To Coffee To Beef To Bourbon, Your Favorite Things Will Cost More In 2015

While the prices on certain things will inevitably decrease in the coming year — like the cost of my 1989 Daihatsu Charade or the amount of money I need to spend on shampoo — lots of things are expected to get pricier. Unfortunately, a number of these more expensive items are probably on many of your “things I really enjoy” lists. [More]

(KKTV.com)

Parents Say Joe’s Crab Shack Accidentally Served Alcoholic Drinks To Table Of Kids

It’s understandable that a seafood restaurant might want to employ marine life in the naming of its drinks, both virgin and alcoholic, but perhaps it’s time to reconsider having the kiddie and adult versions named after the same sea animal, after parents say a table of kids aged 8 and under were served a round of boozy beverages. [More]