Photo by Chris Fleisher

So, imagine you’re one of those corner drug store chains, the place that has one of everything you might need at any given hour of the day or night. You’re a bit more expensive than Wal-Mart, which is where many of your regular customers have turned during a deeply damaged economy.

What do you do? How do you win back the business you’ve lost?

If you’re Walgreens, you take a lesson from those desperate yet resourceful frat boys you knew in college — you buy friends with cheap booze.

“We’re looking to meet more needs of our customers and give them a reason to shop with us more often,” said Walgreens spokesman Robert Elfinger in an email. “Our moderate selection of beer and wine provides another convenience for them. … we believe there’s demand for a premium beer at a value price. In this tough economy, consumers are looking for value and ways to make their money go further.”

Last month, Walgreens introduced its very own brand of beer — Big Flats 1901, a fizzy yellow lager sold for the low-low price of 50-cents a can. (Check out the review this Thursday on BrewsReporter.com. Stephen Colbert also recently gave it a plug.)
Contract brewed for Walgreens by North American Breweries (makers of such fine libations as Genesse and Labatt), Big Flats is billed as “a premium beer at an affordable price.” The marketers tout its “six-row barley malt, corn grits, hops from Yakima Valley and bottom fermenting yeast.” The name pays homage to the flat boats that traveled upstate New York rivers delivering goods to the early settlers. According to the label, “It’s the water that makes it.”

But it’s real selling point ain’t quality. It is price. At $2.99 for a six pack, or $11.49 for a case of 24, one can of Big Flats is cheaper than a box of Tic Tacs.

This is not Walgreens’ first entrance into the alcoholic beverage market. It began selling its own private-label wine, Southern Point, for $3.99 a bottle in December 2009, and followed it up a few months later with David Stone, a higher-end brand selling for $7.99.

More interesting, however, is the larger trend that Walgreens has seized on. One of the market sectors that tends to do OK when people are pinching pennies is alcohol sales. And while the mid-tier brands have taken a hit during the recession, the two extremes — high-end craft beer, and the bottom shelf brands like Keystone — have held their own.

With the introduction of Big Flats, Walgreens has staked its claim to the bottom shelf. But it’s not ignoring the good stuff, either. Yes, indeed — in case you hadn’t heard, it also has shown an interest in craft beer.

Last month, a Duane Reade (the New York drug store chain acquired by Walgreens in April 2010) began offering craft beers on tap in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. Residents in this hipster Mecca didn’t really dig on the chain moving into their neighborhood, so Duane Reade thought that throwing a kegger might ease them into the community.

“With each of our newer stores, we’re trying to find what works in our community,” said Paul Tiberio, senior vice president for merchandising and marketing at Duane Reade, in an interview with The New York Times. “This was an area that was devoid of opportunities for beer.”

That last statement is debatable, and it’s unclear how many customers are going to want to hit the corner drug store for a pint of Fire Island Lighthouse Ale. To be clear, this is not an experiment that Walgreens/Duane Reade is trying everywhere.

But most of its stores carry labels that your average beer geek wouldn’t be embarrassed to offer up at a barbecue. At the store closest to me in West Lebanon, N.H., the coolers had Sam Adams Winter Lager and Boston Lager, Newcastle and Harpoon IPA.

Walgreens is never going to be a beer lover’s paradise. But that’s not really what it’s there for.
It’s the kind of store that, if you find yourself at 1:30 a.m. needing to satiate a craving for Little Debbie snack cakes and cheap suds and you happen to have two bills and an ashtray full of the pennies, nickels, dimes and Canadian quarters leftover from late-night beer runs of the not-so-distant past, then it’ll do the trick.