IME here in high density white collar comfy urban lite / suburbia all our 24-hour groc, big box, pharmacies, etc., died of COVID.
~10pm to ~8am the gas stations with convenience stores attached (lots) and the convenience stores w gas pumps (few) are the only retail game in town. Plenty of bars & restaurants still serving until 0-stupid-30, but no retail.
Unrelated to that, Amazon is making a full court press to take over the market served by both CVS & Walgreens, and the various corporate mail order bulk pharmacies such as Express Scrips.
It may well be about time to short a pile of CVS & WBA; they are fuxxored.
Meantime the 7-11s and similar will survive / thrive as the roaches of retail. They sell nothing but crap, and at ~50% over local normal retail, but at 3am or if you’re on foot, or can’t wait 12 hours for Amazon to deliver they are the only game in town.
So look the other way, ignore the filth and loitering homeless, and go ahead on in and buy those smokes, beer, milk, M&Ms, motor oil, or Tylenol. Or lotto. Lotsa lotsa lotto.
You may not think of them as such, but it’s clear that Walgreens and CVS have positioned themselves as such, in an effort to drive traffic. A significant fraction of the floor space at those chains’ stores are dedicated to snack foods, candy, big coolers full of single-serving bottles of soda, bottled water, energy drinks, etc., and, in many places (subject to local laws), beer and wine.
Yep. They (CVS & Walgreens at least) are large-format neighborhood convenience markets with a sidelight in Rx and OTC health-related products.
Their own SEC filings for the last 15 years outline just this strategy.
In some parts of the country “drugstore” means something a bit different, but by and large for retail Rx and health products every other non-bigbox outlet is a rounding error compared to those two.
I remember Rexall as a real drug store. They only sold cosmetics, perfume, gift boxes of candy, and a few snacks. The pharmacy and OTC drugs was their main sales.
My aunt worked at Rexall for most of her adult life. She went to a training seminar every few years to learn about the newest cosmetics. She would help customers select items. Demonstrate how to use them. The store had a chair and wall mirror for the customers.
Rexall is long gone. Competition from Walgreens and grocery stores wiped them out decades ago.
Let me describe my local CVS, here in my Chicago suburb. Actual “health/drug” products are a minority of their floor space.
In the front half of the store:
One half (so, one quarter of the total floor space) is OTC health stuff: pain, cold and flu, first aid, antacids, vitamins and supplements, etc., plus an aisle that’s mostly things like compression socks and sleeves, canes, walkers, toilet boosters, etc. The pharmacy department, and their “Minute Clinic” urgent care area are also in this section.
The other half of the front is personal care and beauty: shampoo, soap, skin care, makeup, etc.
One third of the back (so, almost as much real estate as the OTC section) is snacks and soda, including several wall coolers with single-serve drinks, and a couple of frozen-food coolers with frozen pizzas, frozen appetizers, and ice cream.
The second third of the back is two or three aisles aisles of seasonal stuff (currently all Halloween candy; it’ll be full of Christmas candy and wrapping paper after the end of the month)
The final third of the back has an aisle of school/office supplies, an aisle of housewares (paper towels, garbage bags, toilet paper, paper plates, kitchen gadgets, etc.), and two aisles of beer, wine, and liquor. There is also a wall cooler with beer in this section.
I asked her, and she said “our” CVS is a lot like that, but with a lot smaller “food” section. So, I guess it’s just a big 7-11 now. Well, with pharmacy services.
I saw an article that quoted a retail expert who thought that Walgreens did a terrible job in the non-pharmacy part of the business; selling all of that other stuff. Meanwhile, CVS seems to have a good part of the store devoted to cosmetics and perfumes and stuff like that. Are they better at it? I have no idea. Also, CVS owns a pharmacy benefits management company and also the insurer Aetna.
Making quite a propaganda show about switching from promoting tobacco to promoting help-you-quit-smoking kits. They were real sanctimonious about it. IMO it was a gutsy responsible move of which I approve. I was … underwhelmed … by the smarmy sales tactics that came along for the ride.
Separately, Walgreens at the national level still derives a lot of their total revenue from alcohol sales. Often conducted from separate dedicated liquor
/ wine / beer stores adjacent to the larger regular convenience / drug / beauty store which is “dry”.
Meanwhile CVS derives little of their revenue from alcohol.
CVS has gotten too inconvenient for me to consider it a convenience store lately. I still get my meds from them but a couple times ago I thought I may as well pick up some other stuff while I was there, but everything I wanted was locked up with only 1 employee in sight who was also manning the register. So I’m not going to think of them when I think of picking up random stuff anymore.
IME both brands suffer from totally F-ed up distribution since COVID, and lots of stuff locked up to deter shoplifting even in areas you would not expect organized shoplifting to be an issue.
When you go into an aisle and about 1/3rd of the shelf tags have no product behind them, something is fundamentally wrong at the Corporate level. Especially when you have the same experience at 4 or 5 of their other stores across a metro area or even across multiple states.
That plus a severe lack of on-duty workers all bespeaks a corporate chain circling the drain while the C-suite has no idea how to fix it.
I don’t want them to die. But I expect they will and fairly soon.
Yes indeed, I just got a letter from my insurance company saying they were switching the mail order pharmacy service from CVS/Caremark over to Amazon, as of January 1.
Sorry, but the Wikipedia article on Slurpees disagrees. It states that Icees were developed in the late 1950s (the Icee article says they were introduced in 1958), and that 7-Eleven entered into a contract with Icee in 1965 to sell the beverages in their stores, but under a different name (which wound up being “Slurpee”).
7-11 was Johnny come lately to Greater Los Angeles where everything originated back in the 1950s - 1970s
ICEE was old news at the well-established chains of convenience stores (Tick-Tock anyone?) when 7-11 finally staggered onto the scene w their silly-ass Slurpees.
They started the size wars as a way to make up for way too little way too late in a tough market. Hence we now have 1 gallon(!!?!!) fountain drinks here in 2024.
Hehehe, Stop 'n Go had “The Hawg”, a half gallon fountain cup in the '80s. The half gallon Double Gulp from 7-11 ('89 IIRC) was probably a reaction to that.