Innis & Gunn are giving free beer to glassware thieves
The Edinburgh craft beer company are offering up a free pint of beer for anyone who owns up to having pinched one of their distinctive pint glasses in the past
Hang your heads in shame, Scottish beer drinkers. Since 2013, craft ale hounds have reportedly liberated a staggering 70,000 of Innis & Gunn’s lager branded pint glasses from bars and pubs across Scotland. They are great looking glasses, but come on guys.
Innis & Gunn are well aware of the missing glassware, with many craft beer fans sharing their ‘pinched’ collections on the brand’s social media pages. And earlier this month, the brewer launched its ‘Drink It In’ outdoor billboard campaign which poked fun at the tendency for its lager glasses to go missing in Edinburgh.
Things came to a head a few weeks ago when Innis & Gunn played a sly trick on sticky-fingered Edinburgh beer-nuts. On Wednesday 17 May, the company parked a delivery van filled with 1000 of the branded lager glasses in the centre of Edinburgh and the van was left unattended. Innis & Gunn then turned a blind eye as passers-by helped themselves. “It took only 32 minutes for Edinburgh fans of the brewer to make off with the entire content of the van,” revealed Innis & Gunn. “Some lucky ones carted off with as many as six glasses.”
“We knew our glassware was popular in Edinburgh,” says Innis & Gunn’s head of marketing Jane Cannon, “but I think everyone here was astonished at the speed at which they were taken from our van last week.”
And how are Innis & Gunn reacting to this daylight robbery? Today, at the brewer’s Beer Kitchen venue, they’re giving free beer to the guilty parties!
In a curious move, Innis & Gunn are going to be handing out a ‘refill bag’ of lager to anyone who can provide picture evidence that they have helped themselves to an Innis & Gunn pint glass in the past. “Customers who “pinched” a glass from the Innis & Gunn delivery and those who have previously ‘borrowed’ from bars and pubs are eligible to receive a refill bag if they provide a picture of their ‘borrowed’ Innis & Gunn lager pint glass,” says the Innis & Gunn statement.
Yes, you read that right. If you’ve half-inched an Innis & Gunn pint glass they’re going to give you some beer to take home and drink from your ill-begotten drinking vesal. “Our glasses are great,” says Jane Cannon, “but what’s even better is the lager to go with it. Now our ‘borrowers’ can enjoy the full Innis & Gunn experience at home.”
Those of you out there with cupboards full of Innis & Gunn glasses and a brass neck can collect your free ‘refill bag’ of lager by heading down to Beer Kitchen on Lothian Road between 5-7pm today (1 Jun) with photographic evidence you’ve ‘borrowed’ one of Innis & Gunn’s distinct glasses.