Drinking a Beer While Grocery Shopping

by admin | November 20, 2025 2:10 pm

[1]I did something unprecedented in my seven decades on this sphere. It was completely legal, indeed encouraged. I drank a draft beer while grocery shopping. Right here Behind the Pine Curtain.

It was a tasty Karbach Hopadillo IPA, brewed in Houston, one of my favorite Texas-brewed beers. It cost $1.08 with tax and came in a plastic cup. This is a grand opening special, and the price almost certainly will rise soon. I pulled out two dollars and told the bartender to keep the change – last of the big spenders. The bar is located inside Brookshire’s Fresh, a new grocery store and considerably more, which opened last week a scant six miles from our farm.

The shopping carts have cup holders. Things are looking up in these parts.

I don’t think one can even legally grocery shop and drink a beer in Germany, where practically every town, particularly in Bavaria, has its own brewery. Perhaps DWS – drinking while shopping – is going to catch on elsewhere. That remains to be seen.

When anything of note opens in a modestly sized city – Longview has a population of about 82,000 – it is well-nigh impossible to darken its doors for a time. The first of three (three!) Braum’s fast-food restaurants opened a few days earlier. Its parking lot has been jammed day and night ever since. (I know all this because our farm is just off Hwy. 259, and we take this route into town daily.) I care little about Braum’s, having lost my taste years ago for fast food except on the rarest of occasions. Judging from its full parking lot, this is a minority opinion. I am used to having a minority opinion.

We bided our time, but on Monday my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I headed to Fresh to check it out. It was crowded but not claustrophobic.

There are two Brookshire companies. Brookshire’s, which opened its first Fresh store in Longview and third overall, was founded and is based in nearby Tyler. It was started by Wood T. Brookshire in 1928 and has about 200 stores in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. It is still family owned. Wood broke off from Brookshire Brothers. Tom and Austin Brookshire founded that company in 1921 and is still based in Lufkin. It is now employee owned and has about 54 stores, mainly in Texas with a smattering in Louisiana.

This Fresh store is downright fancy, unlike any grocery store this town has ever seen. It is similar in concept to H-E-B’s beloved Central Market, found in Central Texas and in the DFW region. Fresh features a kids’ playground, a stage for live music surrounded by patio tables, several food outlets and deli offerings, an excellent selection of beer and wine, lovely flower arrangements, even a nice collection of Swig tumblers – a competitor to the ubiquitous Stanley cups that some folks, including daughter Abbie, collect. As is her wont, my BMC closely examined pretty much everything, though we did not dally in the canned goods section. I was content sipping on the Karbach, in no hurry to leave, though wisely deciding to stop at one beer. I would hate to get an SWI – shopping while intoxicated.

I returned the next day before going to work. Fresh was offering 25% off on the purchase of six bottles of wine. The offer was about to expire. That is a decent deal, so I took in my handy cloth wine bag, which holds six bottles. I swung by the deli and bought a container of tuna salad and another of Orzo Greek salad – lunch for the workweek.

Since I was headed to work in the library, and would not do so with beer breath, I skipped the bar with its (temporary) $1 beer. But I’ll be back.

Grocery shopping has become markedly more appealing.

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