A Better Place to Buy Packaged Beer

Festival Foods Neenah

If you regularly travel north out of Oshkosh on Highway 41, you’ve probably already noticed the new Festival Foods being built in Neenah. It’s just off the highway at 647 S. Green Bay Road. The store opened on Friday and it’s now the best spot for buying packaged beer within 20 minutes of Oshkosh. They have a nice selection of craft and imported beer and they treat all of it well. It’s not as if this place could compete with Discount Liquors in Milwaukee, but it’s certainly on par with Woodman’s or Flanagan's in Appleton. And if your in Oshkosh, it’s just close enough and the selection is just good enough to make it worth the trip. You’ll find plenty at the Neenah store that can’t get your hands on in Oshkosh. I’ve been buying most of my packaged beer at the Festival here in Oshkosh, but that’s going to change. 

It kind of pains me to say that. You’d think our locals would have gotten wise by now to what’s going on in the world of beer. They haven’t. Our retail selection in Oshkosh remains mediocre at best. In fact, I’d say it’s even a bit worse than it was two years ago. The Pick n’ Save stores are a joke and Festival in Oshkosh has drifted back to giving a good portion of their craft section over to packs of Corona Light and beers of that ilk. Meanwhile, they continue to place their higher-end beers in their specialty-beer ghetto where it sits warm, slowly baking under fluorescent lights and rapidly degenerating. Sorry, but if you’re willing to treat unpasteurized, bottle-conditioned beer that way, you either don’t care or you don’t know what you’re doing. 

It’s odd that things haven’t picked up here on the retail side. If you look at the explosion of craft-beer taps that have come to Oshkosh within the past year (and there’s more on the way), it’s obvious that this city would support a better selection if it were offered. Until that happens, I’ll load-up in Neenah.