Dive Brief:
- Fox Bros. Piggly Wiggly is teaming up with Milwaukee’s MobCraft to brew Foxtoberfest, a craft beer that will be sold exclusively at their markets and the MobCraft taproom, according to The Shelby Report.
- The two companies hosted a craft beer contest, inviting customers to submit beer ideas and then vote on them. The winner was a traditional Oktoberfest-style lager.
- The craft beer will be on store shelves in four-packs of 16-ounce cans at all Fox Bros. Piggly Wiggly stores starting September 1. It will also be poured at the MobCraft taproom in Milwaukee.
Dive Insight:
If a grocery chain were going to launch a craft beer partnership, Wisconsin is an ideal location. The state is well known for its love of beer. Fox Bros. Piggly Wiggly is a Wisconsin-based company, and this new collaborative effort with MobCraft has a great deal of potential to be beneficial to both parties.
Piggly Wiggly already hosts a People’s Choice Brat Contest to chose a new in-house sausage, so it makes sense that they would branch out to many brat eaters beverage of choice: beer. MobCraft was a clever partner for this project. The Milwaukee-based brewery is crowdsourced, so people submit and vote on beer ideas. The beer with the most pre-orders wins and is brewed at the end of the month. Piggly Wiggly modified this model and found success with Foxtoberfest.
The grocery chain benefits in this deal in several ways. First, they’re engaging their consumers and putting value in their opinions. Second, they’re creating a local product. Shopping local is a popular trend right now, with the local products market projected to hit $20 billion by 2020. And third, Fox Bros. Piggly Wiggly created a reason to chose its store over a competitor. If you want to buy Foxtoberfest, you have to come to them or the MobCraft taproom. MobCraft, in turn, stands to gain exposure to a far larger audience and expand sales.
MobCraft’s crowdsourcing infrastructure could also help with sales of Foxtoberfest. Consumers who invested their own ideas in a company would be more likely to buy it at a store.
Other grocery chains have had great success with turning to local brands to boost interest. H-E-B, a Texas-based grocery chain, stands out in this department. Since 2014, they’ve hosted a “Primo Picks Quest for Texas Best” competition. Local consumers are invited to pitch their food or beverage idea to store representatives, and the winning products are incorporated into its private label offerings. So far, H-E-B has added 135 local products this way.