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When Walgreens enters a new market, they first open their smaller pharmacies...then come in with the bigger corner stores

jamcool wrote:When Walgreens enters a new market, they first open their smaller pharmacies...then come in with the bigger corner stores

Walgreens came to Richmond a few years ago strictly with free-standing stores. They have 16 stores now, with quite a few of those in underserved areas, where they really fill a grocery function.

Rite Aid is actually right now doing a major remodel of its Longview, WA store which opened in the 1960s as a Pay'N Save store and did not change a whole lot over the years. There are still several large Rite Aid stores in Washington, Idaho and Oregon which were former Payless stores as well, some simply have portions of the stores blocked off by shelving where others have been remodeled. And others in smaller towns closed and were not replaced.

As for Walgreens, a couple of years ago they purchased most of the Hi-School Pharmacy chain based in Vancouver, Washington. They have remodeled some of these stores. Worth noting is that unlike most of the Walgreens stores around here, almost all of the former Hi-School stores are located in strip malls.

As for Longs, they built a couple of brand new stores in Vancouver, Washington and Washougal, Washington a few years ago but have not opened any more.

r, sounds about like the exterior of the new Rite Aid here in some ways. The entrance reminds me of a new Walgreens more than anything else.

Walgreen's here seems to be on a kick of building bigger and bigger stores, even replacing a few smaller stripmall stores with larger freestanding ones. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an "old" Walgreens in Louisville. The last one with a lunch counter closed last year. That one was downtown with a parking ramp on top.

One reason for the store replacements seems to be to get a prescription drivethru. But they also seem to have expanded the food and sundries.

Riteaid here seems to really make hay in their liquor dept. The prices, especially on hard stuff, are very competitive and they feature liquor prices in their weekly, if not semiweekly, ads. This has naturally expanded a lot since advertising liquor prices became legal here.

A difference I've noted between Walgreens and CVS and even more so Rite Aid is that while they all have a more or less similar selection of items, Rite Aid and CVS have far less inventory on the shelves, just 1 or 2 of many products while Walgreens keeps its shelves pretty full.

Does Walgreens almost seem to be a convenience store AND a pharmacy, more so than any others have ever been before?

todd wrote:Does Walgreens almost seem to be a convenience store AND a pharmacy, more so than any others have ever been before?

In my opinion, yes. The newer CVS stores have "Food Store" signs, but the amount of groceries CVS carries pales compared to Walgreens. But then again, Rite Aid is doing the same thing.

Yes, especially with Walgreen's having a cooler with dairy and some deli foods. Here they've been pushing milk a bit.

Freestanding Osco's used to have a heck of a lot of food, altho I don't recall what they had for dairy. Drug Emporium also had an aisle or two of food and a lot of pop.

Freestanding Osco's used to have a heck of a lot of food, altho I don't recall what they had for dairy.

In fact several freestanding Oscos in PHX call their food depts "Albertsons Mini Markets"!

One of Walgreens fancier/bigger units is on the Strip in Las Vegas - Just north of the MGM Grand and next to M&Ms world...complete with Vegas-style neon signage!

jamcool wrote:
In fact several freestanding Oscos in PHX call their food depts "Albertsons Mini Markets"!

So do the stores here in California (Savon of course). Since the ABS merger, Albertsons has wanted their name all over thing inside of Savon (for a time, the name badges only said Albertsons, no Savon or Osco anywhere!)

I would expect that Savon and Osco will focus more on the drug aspect now that they will be CVS.

This is sorta off topic, but the Savon Express store in Riverside (on Mary St) was originally CVS and was one of the locations bought by American Stores in the early 90's. Guess there will be another CVS banner on that store within the year (if they keep it open).

I got to thinking today that I couldn't recall what an older freestanding Walgreens looked like. Then I realized that there might not be any here that haven't been redecorated fairly recently, like in the past 10 years or so. Some of ours are freestanding next to or attached to the end of strip malls so they match the overall style. The completely standalone ones mostly have these horrible fake tudor gable geegaws. Walgreens must have a boatload of money, as much as they spend on new stores and fixing up. Or maybe they save so much on architect's fees...

Anyhow, does anybody remember what they looked like before that?

Whatever you think about the the new Rite Aids, they're at least distinctive even if they don't necessarily match the neighborhood.

r wrote:... Walgreens must have a boatload of money, as much as they spend on new stores and fixing up. Or maybe they save so much on architect's fees...

The freestanding store concept must have economic considerations that I'm not fully conversant with. All I know is that if you own a piece of vacant commercial property, it's usually very good news to hear that one of the large pharmacy chains is interested in buying or leasing your property. I've seen a couple of examples where the Walgreens of the world were willing to pay two or three times what was being offered by others for the same location.

Around here, the big operators don't seem to have a problem getting the zoning they need for freestanding stores, but there's usually issues with buffers and especially the noise from the drive-thru intercom that need to be addressed in the approval process.

CVS entered the market here in the 1980's I beleive but were sold to Sav-On in the late 80's (?)

There was a CVS in our mall that opened in 1985. It was a large store suprisingly.

Hey Jeff.
Where are you located? seems that you are around here some where lol.

Anyways, when I was younger, there was a CVS store in the Plaza Camino Real mall in Carlsbad, CA. It was a fairly large store (it is now home to the Warehouse Music store) and was closed when SavOn bought CVS' southern California stores because SavOn already operated a store across the street. That old CVS seemed to have a little bit of everything from what I can recall. I just think its so weird that Savon will now be CVS. I can't seem to get over it.