There was a ripple of news on social networking sites yesterday about the future of Anheuser -Busch’s gluten-free Redbridge beer. On Twitter there were tweets that said the company was planning to discontinue the beer next month.
But a company spokesman late yesterday told Gluten-Free Living the beer giant has no plans to discontinue Redbridge in the near or distant future. He was perplexed about the rumor and said he had no idea where it might have come from.
Just recently, Gluten-Free Living was told that the beer was selling extremely well, so we were not sure what to make of rumors of Redbridge’s demise. Until we officially hear otherwise, we are going to count on the continued availability of a product that is appreciated by a significant segment of the adult gluten-free community.
Cheers!
In other news about gluten-free offerings from a well known national chain, Starbucks is now selling”lucy’s” gluten-free cookies at select locations. The Virginian-Pilot reported that Starbucks this week began stocking the Norfolk company’s cookies in 6,000 of Starbucks’ 11,000 locations nationwide. The newspaper said Starbucks is waiting to see how successful they are before saying anything about further availability.
The pre-packaged cookies are part of Starbucks lineup of “on-the-go” snacks. Chocolate chip, sugar and cinnamon flavors are available at $1.50 for four or $5.95 for 16. In addition to being gluten-free, the cookies do not contain milk, butter, eggs, casein, peanuts or tree nuts. They are also cholesterol and trans fat free. Several stores, including Whole Foods, also sell them.
In addition to “lucy’s” cookies, Starbucks this week added a variety of gluten-free snacks, including Food Should Taste Good chips, Two Moms in the Raw granola, several fruit snacks, and nuts.
The company discontinued it’s pastry-case gluten-free Orange Valencia cake almost as fast as Conan is being squeezed off the Tonight show at NBC.
We’ll have to wait to see if the gluten-free cookies get a longer run, more like Jay Leno.
Amy
Amy –
Starbucks just added a number of new GF snack options, including GF granola! See my post at Gluten Free Philly for more info:
http://glutenfreephilly.blogspot.com/2010/01/starbucks-redux.html
GFPhilly –
Thanks for filling me in! I have been away for a few days and only heard about the cookies. I’v updated the blog to add the others.
Amy
just FYI – the Lucy’s GF cookies use certified GF oat flour in their flour blend – i know some people don’t eat oats so I wanted to throw it out there.
JZ –
Good information to include. Thanks.
Amy