Walgreens Heads to the Super Bowl with Up Market: Fresh

Walgreens will take its Up Market: Fresh mobile tour to Super Bowl Boulevard, the four-day experience leading up to the big game on Feb. 3 in New Orleans, where it will engage football fans with interactive games and a taste of its new fresh-made juices, smoothies, low-fat frozen yogurt and coffees. The stop is the latest in the mobile tour, which launched in Chicago in October and is designed to raise awareness of the store’s fresh food offerings as it seeks to expand beyond its traditional drugstore format with convenient and healthy options for shoppers.

Housed in a custom-made 40-foot Holiday Rambler motor coach, Up Market: Fresh will continue throughout the year, making stops to promote Walgreens’ flashy new flagship stores, which are focused on health, beauty and convenience and feature a food service area with a sushi chef, juice and smoothie bar, café and frozen yogurt. The bus also will travel to markets that have stores remodeled in Walgreens’ new Well Experience format, which offers more beauty products, convenience foods such as apples, bananas and salads and places pharmacists in the front of the store. The bus will appear at special events, such as the Super Bowl and Fashion Week in New York City, as well as in underserved urban areas to promote the importance of eating fresh food and wellness.

The bus features an awning and café tables outside where attendees can enjoy their samples, then enter through a glass door that resembles a storefront to experience a replica of the Up Market section of the store, complete with stainless steel counters, frozen yogurt and a toppings bar, juice machines, fresh food and a barista.

“It can take time to change perception, and building our flagship stores help that, but we wanted to take it further faster, so the idea was to go mobile. If you can put something locally in the community for a period of time and then be able to move it, that is an effective use of commitment, time and money,” Jim Jensen, merchandise manager for perishable beverages and snacks at Walgreens, told Buzz. Agency: Marketing Werks, Chicago.