How to Get Cheap Alcohol [15 Ways to Save on Alcohol]

My family consumes very little alcohol. While most of it is not appealing to us, the other reason is that the cost compared to other beverage choices is too high!

The good news is that there are several ways to get both alcohol and beer for much cheaper than shooting over to the nearest store. Your best bet is to combine where you buy alcohol with ways to lower the price.

Cheapest Places to Buy Alcohol and Beer

Aldi

Aldi has a sizeable selection of beer, white wine and red wine, rum, and whiskey. They have no brand name options, but their brands seem to keep winning awards for quality.

The most well known is their Winking Owl brand, which can be purchased for less than four dollars per bottle of wine, depending on your local taxes. You will not find any name brands, but Aldi is the best place to consistently find the cheapest beer and alcohol.

Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe’s and Aldi are companies owned by the same family, so it is no surprise that they both have inexpensive alcohol options.

Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw wine, also known as “two buck chuck,” became famous because of its price and quality. Several other spirits are also available with non-two buck chuck bottles at $5.99 and a premium lager for $6.99.

Costco

Is any low-cost food or beverage list complete without Costco? The warehouse giant has affordable prices on wine, beer, and spirits.

Costco gets these lower prices because they buy the bottles by the pallet instead of by the box, passing the savings on to you. It’s a bulk alcohol discount that is hard to beat.

Because of the laws that regulate alcohol, Costco cannot restrict its alcohol sales to members only. If you do not have Costco membership cards, you can head to the member services desk and get a one-day alcohol only pass.

Safeway

You will probably do better on the prices for alcohol at one of the three options above, but having more stores across the country has its advantages for convenience.

Safeway has 908 locations in 18 different US States.

You will need a membership card, the promotions they run every week can compete with the everyday prices of Aldi, Trader Joe’s, and Costco, and you will get more brand names.

Target

Like Safeway, Target will have mostly name-brand options. If the brand is important to you, then Target promotions will make it one of your preferred options.

You can also get additional savings with the Target RedCard. You will get 5% off your purchase with your RedCard (except in Indiana), and our RedCard Review details all the benefits of having a debit or credit card with Target.

Local Stores

Most grocery stores will have weekly discounts in their ads and have the best selection. These discounts always include some form of sale on alcohol.

You will also find discounts at local liquor stores. The best prices on liquor can frequently be found in the clearance section of smaller retailers.

While everyday prices are much higher than Aldi, Trader Joe’s, or Costco, these sale prices can be very competitive.

On top of that, you can use coupons and rebates to get even lower prices and have a chance to find a great deal on your favorite beer.

Normal grocery stores work mainly with name brands so they often have discounts from the manufacturer. Coors light, Budweiser, and many more offer coupons and rebates when they need to move inventory.

And of course, we encourage you to support the local shops in your community.

Online Stores

While many can find a quality liquor store nearby, others are too rural. You can find some of the least expensive and finest liquors online.

The online liquor store have gone from a novelty to a booming industry. They not only have great prices, they have the largest selection of beer and other alcohol. You can be sure to find your favorite wines and the biggest selection of beer.

Check an online store that delivers to your area to see if one meets your needs and make sure to check delivery time.

Ways to Get Alcohol for Cheap

Whether you shop at the cheapest places to buy alcohol or not, there are other ways to get discounts on your booze. Any of these options can help you save some money on beer, wine, and spirits.

Coupons

Coupons have gone much more digital than the old days, where we cut them out of the Sunday newspaper inserts.

Now you can print them from your computer or have them loaded onto an app. What makes coupons exciting is that there is more than one app, and if multiple apps have the same coupon, you can use one receipt for all of them.

The best coupon apps right now are:

Rebate Apps

I am a big fan of rebate apps. They work by giving you a portal to visit retailer websites.

When you click on a link in their portal, you get money back into your account for whatever you purchase. This is great for places like Target, Walmart, and Kroger that allow you to do your grocery shopping from their website.

My favorite of these apps is TopCashBack.com. I have seen rebates as high as 8% for major grocers, but they tend to be closer to 2% most of the time.

Rebates

When you visit traditional grocery stores, you will find rebate forms attached to the shelves using a tear pad. When you pair these mail-in rebates with the weekly promotions that some stores offer, it pairs up to be an excellent discount.

Even better is that these tear pad rebates are from the manufacturer. That means you can use them at other retailers than where the tear pad is located.

Be aware that these mail-in rebates can have exclusions for specific products from a brand and other items you purchase with your alcohol. Read the exclusions statement carefully to make sure you are not disqualified when you make the purchase.

Multiple Bottle Discounts

One of the better deals at grocery stores is to offer you a steep discount when you purchase multiple bottles of wine.

It usually goes something like, “buy five bottles of “this brand” wine and get 10% off all the bottles. The same can be seen with bottles of beer and other alcoholic beverages.

Subscription Services

Subscription services are popping up for all kinds of products. While most people think of meal kit subscriptions, many services offer discounted rates for wine subscription boxes, spirits, and beer.

If you are looking to try more expensive alcohol varieties, subscriptions are a good way to get introduced to them at a much lower price.

Drugstore Discounts

The major pharmacies (CVS, Walgreens) frequently run discounted prices on alcohol, beer, and wine. These discounts can be in the form of a sale price or credit to be used on your next visit to the store.

Get a Growler

The growler is a 64 oz jug that breweries use to stow draft beer. The jugs can be purchased directly from the brewery, at restaurants, and in some areas grocery stores.

If you live close to a brewery, they may allow you to bring the growler in for a refill at a discounted price.

If you go this route, remember than the average retail price for a pint of craft beer is around $6 (depending on where you live). A growler has four pintswhich is the biggest quantity of beer you can get from most of these local brewers. Make sure you aren’t paying “at the bar” prices for a product that should be closer to the wholesale price.

Build Your Own 6-Pack

Some grocery stores allow you to get a discount for picking out bottles to fill a six-pack of beer with various craft beers available. I have seen Safeway do this.

To put it in perspective, if you buy a six-pack of Blue Moon bottles, it will cost you $9.99. They let you build your six-pack for $6.99. 33% off is not too shabby.

Brew it Yourself

The rabbit hole of brewing beer at home is deep and has many different options. If you check out home brewing kits on Amazon, you will find everything from a simple one and two-gallon kits to digital eight gallon home brewing systems.

If you are doing this to save money, I would stick to the smaller kits and then buy new ingredients to reuse the equipment.

Drizly

Drizly is an alcohol delivery service. If they are available in your area and you try them out for the first time, you can get $5 off your first order of $20 or more by using the code HELLO.

They also have closeout deals and sales on the site. These are almost always a good deal that can help you save money on alcohol.

Stack Your Savings

Stacking your savings on any grocery type product will most likely yield the lowest price you can find.

The stacking strategy works by using several of the above methods together. For example, your local grocery store has a sale on a brand of spirits that you like, the manufacturer has a mail-in rebate on a tear pad, and you found a coupon on the Ibotta app for that product.

You can “stack” all of these discounts together and get an amazingly cheap price on alcohol.

Final Thoughts on Buying Cheap Alcohol

Saving money on alcohol is not any different than learning how to spend less on groceries. There is no one best way, no cheapest place, and a lot of the strategies are the same.

If alcohol is a regular part of your family’s grocery budget, then make sure to stretch those dollars as far as possible by employing some of the above strategies.