I do a lot of grocery shopping at CVS. If I just need a couple of things, milk, juice, snacks then I go to CVS. It’s a lot closer to my house and mostly empty all the time so the wait at check out is rarely more than 2 people deep unlike the grocery store which is always crowded. In fact I’ll be stopping in on the way home today for milk.
Family Video and Menards have both done well by making property management part of their business portfolio. I could see it being a winner for CVS to have an extra income stream assuming they can lease the space.
During Walgreens big growth boom in the early 2000s, I read once that the strategy was that no one in an urban/suburban area should be more than a mile from a Walgreens.
Are you Canadian?
Re: property value of closed stores.
It’s not always good. E.g., when (the remnants of ) Eckerd drug stores got taken over by Rite Aid in 2007, one of their stores near us had just opened. It was closed and has been sitting vacant ever since with a (now faded) for sale sign in the window.
There were two nearly finished Rite Aids in the area that were now redundant. One became an auto parts place and was presumably a good deal. The other sat vacant a long time and became a dollar store, not likely such a good deal.
For places like Kmarts, etc., the land is worth more than the building. They can sell the land or rebuild to suit. A wide variety of store types can go into the space.
The small parcels for drug stores are less valuable and the nature of the buildings limits what can go in the existing building. (Especially if rival drug stores are not allowed.) Note how small the parking lots of stand-alone drug stores are. Razing and rebuilding has a significantly greater cost ratio.
This is a good explanation of why your prescription takes so damn long to fill.
I go to a locally-owned pharmacy that does a pretty good job of filling my prescriptions in a timely fashion. Hell, my stuff is usually ready before I walk in the door and they’re maybe five minutes from my doctor’s office.
That said, there are times when I have to wait. They’re the go-to pharmacy for people being discharged from the local hospital because they stock durable medical equipment and supplies, and those people take a long time because they often need to be counseled on their prescriptions. They’re also the go-to pharmacy for a couple of home-health agencies, and those orders take a lot of time, as well. As long as I’m not in any acute pain, I don’t mind waiting because there are times I was the person in need of counseling, and I’m sure I will be again.
Not too far from me, there are two pairs of CVS stores within a stone’s throw of each other. The two on Higgins (6200 & 6417) are within sight of each other. One used to be an Osco, a chain which CVS acquired. Somehow, they must do enough business to justify the very close proximity but I don’t know how.
That was written almost 10 years ago. It’s much, much worse now, thanks to e-scripts. :mad:
In Los Angeles I know a place where there are two CVS stores right across the street from each other. As in your case, one used to be an Osco.
My link didn’t work right, punch in zip code 60630.
Plus, typing your name on that round bottle. That’s got to be the most difficult part.
I gave up after he started with a couple bullshit excuses like “You never had a prescription filled here but you claim you did”, “You should be at the pharmacy across town” and “You’re trying to use your old insurance card”.
Sure, it’s everyone else’s fault. Of course, I’ve been going to the same CVS for years, using the same insurance and they still can’t manage to pull a bottle off the shelf in under an hour. But, oh no, it can’t have anything to do with them, it’s that I’m too stupid to know where prescriptions are filled.
At the very end he says, “Now imagine this wasn’t you at all, but the person who dropped off their prescription three people ahead of you, and you’ll start to have an idea why…your prescription takes so damn long to fill.”
It’s not that it’s everyone else’s fault. All of those excuses happen all day, everyday in the pharmacy. Just one problem can cost the pharmacist 30 minutes of time to figure out what’s happening. If the pharmacist can’t move on from one prescription, nothing is getting reviewed and nothing is receiving the final check. Most pharmacists try to multitask and crank out prescriptions so people aren’t waiting forever, but sometimes yours is just going to be the 20th prescription in the line of people who are waiting while the pharmacist is also trying to do 10 things at once.
Which is still “It’s not MY fault… it’s all you people! Not YOU, of course – you’re wonderful, but you and I are the only half competent people on earth.”
So it’s blame shifting while trying to avoid the ire of the reader by pretending that they’re in it together against the moronic world but none of the blame should ever fall on the guy taking hours to add some water to a bottle of powdered amoxicillian and shaking it a dozen times.