Duane Reade Wins Over Williamsburg With Beer

Photo via Aman*Duh's Flickr

Williamsburg's Duane Reade moved into their new spot on Bedford Avenue (located right across from mainstay King's Pharmacy) late last year, only to be met by angry young locals and their boycotting. So Duane Reade decided to take a few tips from that sleezy frat boy at the end of the bar, and get those locals nice and drunk. It won't be long before they're all waking up surrounded by Duane Reade-branded bags filled with Duane Readed-branded items and wondering what happened last night. Poor King's Pharmacy, always such a nice guy.

The NY Times takes a look at the bar that the chain opened inside their Bedford store, which specializes in hard to find beer; they hand out samples, and you can even have your growlers filled up. Mike Dunning, assistant manager, tells them, “We knew we would have a little bit of a battle to try to bring Duane Reade into this community, because they really don’t like a chain store. With each of our newer stores, we’re trying to find what works in our community." He notes that in the Bronx they carry Goya items, and in Harlem they have "40-foot-wide sections of African-American hair products."

Back in Williamsburg, they even made the bar look like a subway station. Because hipsters love when things that aren't subway stations look like subway stations? Duane Reade's VP of Marketing says, “It’s really a young hipster community so we thought [the bar] would work well." Will locals drink the ~~Kool~~Beer-Aid? One 25-year-old thinks so, saying Kings may soon lose customers to the chain. Like a heartbroken boyfriend, Kings has "no comment" on the situation.

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By Jen Carlson in News on January 14, 2011 1:20 PM

Comments [rss]

Morgan Hocking

corporate america is watching you williamsburg. Poised to sell the trends you started back to the people who followed the trend of moving to your neighbourhood..

John Sullivan

When CVS moves to the 'hood and I can buy Hard Liquor and toilet paper at the same time THEN I will gladly return to live with the cool people from Ohio.

mdiesel

Goddamn kids with their rock n roll music and Duane Reade bar, in my day we had we had to drink paint at home depot if we wanted to get messed up at a national chain store.

Polite New Yorker

This makes me glad I quit drinking.

Guest

They do have better prices than the over priced organic places or the gringo prices from the bodegas.

This does make me think, would the community be Outraged! if a real supermarket actually moved into the area?
I mean the only place that is an actual useful and not price gouging supermarket in the entire area bounced by the East River - Messerole to the West / Williamsburg Bridge to the South / Manhattan Ave to the North and the BQE to the East is the C Town on S.1st and Haymayer.
Its insulting.
But will the people that are all "I am against change in new york city even though that is the essential theme of 400 years of new york city" be against such a thing?

shampoomohawk

From the NYT article:

And in Williamsburg, “this was an area that was devoid of opportunities for beer,” he said.

Ummm... whatever you say, Duane Reade.

Rocknrope

Support local business. Get your beer at DR, get everything else at Kings Pharmacy.

Mordicai

I reiterate this: support local businesses.

THAT being said, kudos to Duane Reade for adapting to fit the community. I still say support local businesses, but if the way you weasel in is by not being awful...well, that is better than the alternative.

Trustafarian

I go to this Duane Reade a few times a week and have never seen anyone getting a growler filled.

Good idea to try catering to the tastes of the neighborhood - but it's bordering on mockery. I went in one Saturday night and they had a DJ spinning crappy house music. Really??