Those stores were open BEFORE Covid. They couldn’t just scale to what they were?
Like Walmart and big box stores that ruined the mom and pop stores on Main Street all over the country, then were sorry to find they, too, had to downsize.
Walgreen’s took away a lot of small pharmacies often owned by a family who kept the place going for decades. Then couldn’t compete with the two new Walgreen’s and three CVS places within two miles of them.
You read my mind (few pages as it has).
This is a return to normalcy. Sales of the vaccine and tests were an aberration and were exploited. Good for them from a capitalism perspective
If the business and market thinks they were to be on going, then they are idiots.
CVS is with Target which helps them and there’s Walmart, grocery and mail order pharmacies to compete with.
Here in ATL there’s lots of decaying former Walgreens, so many I almost assumed they went out of business. Interestingly I haven’t seen one of those buildings become something else. Maybe the areas they were in weren’t the best?
It’s a nonsense excuse I think. They have other problems they don’t want to mention.
For example, competition is one. Years ago, in Chicago, you had 2 options for drugstores: Walgreens and Osco, and Oscos were only add-ons to Jewel supermarkets. So Walgreens had no stand-alone competition. And Jewel closed most (maybe all) of the Oscos a while back.
But now CVS and I’m sure a few others have entered the market and Walgreens has real competition.
Then there is the retail theft epidemic they don’t want to talk about. And the sales hits they are taking from online shopping, and even online prescription services.
But why tell your investors your business is dying for reasons nobody can control, when you can just say “COVID!”
Our Walgreens will now be a Citibank.
“Those stores were open BEFORE Covid. They couldn’t just scale to what they were?”
My thoughts too.
I'm guessing in addition to inflation the store's closing will overwhelmingly be in blue city high-theft hellholes.
The one near me was open 24 hours before COVID. I think it’s 16x7 for the store, and for the pharmacy 16x5 M-F and 8x2 Sat-Sun.