qz.com/walgreens-store-closings-2024-profit-outlook-consumers-1851563941
A quarter of Walgreens stores aren't profitable — and a lot of them are about to close
Their hours are also ridiculous around me.
My towns pharmacy is closed on Saturday and Sunday! It's super frustrating.
Not making money? —> reduce workforce —> less people you can cater to —-> repeat
Their pharmacies are the part of the store that generally is profitable. However, they run on ANCIENT software systems that barely function, are paired to 21st century tech they were never designed to be used with, and Walgreens has known it was far beyond time for an upgrade 20 years ago. They didn't do it because short term profits would be best if they didn't.
They schedule as few techs and pharmacists as they can get away with, almost always run short handed, and depend on people at the front to come back and help in the pharmacy during the busiest times (many retail employees are trained as pharmacy techs.)
Insurance is what takes the most time in the pharmacy, it's almost always a giant fucking ordeal with the insurance companies. The tech who knows how to make the insurance billing "work" for each plan and insurer is the person really moving the pharmacy along. The people in the pharmacy can't move any faster than they can process scripts, and because they are working with controlled substances, they must take extra care to not make mistakes. Walgreens does nothing to help this and instead shits on its employees harder all the time. Short term profits are all that matter, remember.
I know all this because I used to manage Walgreens stores. Absolutely fuck Walgreens. Sadly, the executives who run it will still walk away millionaires (or better) after destroying all the local pharmacies, and a ton of smart hard-working people will be out of work when Walgreens finally goes under.
I wonder why they don't have just standalone pharmacies that only have a pharmacy?
Because when people have to wait 30 mins for their pharmacy it’s a chance for them to impulse shop in the store.
We actually have one of those by me. They downsized a full store into a pharmacy with a double stage entrance.
That's good to know they'll at least consider changing the business plan if needed. It's scary to think 1/4 pharmacies can just close overnight and what that'll do to so many people. Food deserts and now medicine deserts....
Thanks for letting me know why. I always wondered why the hell pharmacies aren't fully automated and near instant. Apparently Amazon in fact offers that service.
The biggest reason Cost Plus Drugs is so cheap is that they don't deal with insurance. It's cheaper to just not accept insurance because the cost of doing business with insurers is so high.
That said, Cost Plus Drugs doesn't carry everything and can't get you meds super fast.
Exactly, wealth ruins everything
Exactly, wealth ruins everything
Stupid people ruin everything.
Jeff Bezos can be as rich as he wants. I ordered some meds on Amazon and they were here the next day.
I'm sure Walgreens just blames shoplifters
Hell shoplifting might be the only way any of those products ever turn. There's usually at least 4-5 stores within a mile or two that has anything they sell at half the cost
That are all surrounded by a CVS and Rite Aid....that are also failing.
Well, they certainly don’t help businesses survive (or anyone else except for themselves)
The Walgreens near my work completely shuts down their pharmacy for an hour for lunch everyday from 12 to 1 while they go to lunch.
And I get it. Everyone is human, we all have to eat. And they don't have the people to keep the pharmacy open.
But do they have to schedule their lunch at the same time as everyone's lunch hour? Do 1-2 instead lol. I can't tell you how many times I've shown up at 1, and there is a group of 12 people, most of them boomers, standing around in a huff waiting to abuse the poor pharmacist girl because they've been waiting 30 minutes.
Anyway, the fact they only have one or two people max manning the pharmacy in a downtown urban store tells me that the store isn't long for this world. That and the half empty shelves.
This was my problem. Moved to CVS.
That’s the CVS retail pharmacy arm. The CVS pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) arm are absolutely terrible, cutthroat, and scratch pharma manufacturers for all the drug rebates they can possibly get for their insurance company partners that CVS alone is responsible for a “fair share” of responsibility why drug prices are where they are today. The other two big PBMs don’t use utilization management (UM) tools like prior authorizations, step edits, and full national drug code (NDC) blocks anywhere near the rate at which CVS uses them.
CVS are bastards, avoid at all costs.
They’re number 4 on the F500 list, and it’s not because of its retail pharmacies.
scratch pharma manufacturers for all the drug rebates they can possibly get for their insurance company partners that CVS alone is responsible for a “fair share” of responsibility why drug prices are where they are today. The other two big PBMs don’t use utilization management (UM) tools like prior authorizations, step edits, and full national drug code (NDC) blocks anywhere near the rate at which CVS uses them.
Wouldn't that result in lower prices for the consumer? I don't really understand most of what you're talking about, but the HR people at the company I'm working for remind us all the time that Walgreens charges more for prescriptions than CVS does, which seems to be true when I've had the opportunity to test it. If CVS pulls that off by playing the insurance reimbursement game more successfully than their competitors, I don't really give a fuck as long as I end up paying less. If that arcane game playing is responsible for higher drug prices overall, it's the game that should change.
How do they compare to Walgreens?
Bro I used to have a mail route with a CVS on it. They wanted me to stop there every day to pick up outgoing parcels.
They were so goddamn slow at getting me the parcels that management actually pulled that stop off my route. I would be in that store for like 25 to 30 minutes every day just waiting for them to hand me a few parcels.
It was unbelievable. I was doing them a courtesy by stopping there, and they couldn't be bothered to pick up the pace for me. The employees would be barely moving.
Jeez talk about ungrateful!
They are the slowest-moving humans to be found outside the DMV.
I dunno, the pharmacists at my local Tesco supermarket could give them a run for their money
Efficiency in pharmacies is crucial, especially for customer satisfaction. Maybe they need to look into automating some of their processes or hiring additional staff during peak hours. Streamlining operations can really boost their profitability and keep customers happy.
Exactly. One fucking person on the register. Why for the love of god.
They’re also subject to a litany of shifting rules and regulations and people complaining about things out of their control. Like a doc wrote a script but insurance declines it for some asinine reason but the person NEEDS the meds so they stand there arguing with the pharmacist because they don’t know where else to turn.
This would make sense as an explanation, if the same issues were also happening at CVS. But the line at CVS moves pretty quickly.
Jist remember to weigh that with all of these companies along side of it.
https://www.fair360.com/top-50-list/2024/
"Leadership" can't fathom paying a fair wage, and if they get close... They downsized instead of thinning upper level compensation packages.
People are slow, because theh can only handle so much work life "balance".
Boycotting companies that don't
or escape crapitalism
Once they started locking every single thing up I stopped buying anything that was locked up from them. It was 2 more minutes to the grocery store, cheaper, and dont have to wait for the 1 person running the entire store to open the cabinet.
I swear it is basically becoming the old days where your tell your cashier what you want and they’d go pick it out and shop for you while you got your mail or whatever else and then you’d have all your stuff ready and pay (or pay prior) It used to be a big deal we let customers shop for themself. Now we are seeing we we originally didn’t
Same. But if they don’t lock it up, I’ve seen people flash mob into the store with trash bags and empty the shelves in and out in 5 minutes.
People feel bold enough to do that because they cut staffing to the bone…finding an employee in their stores is impossible
“wHo CaRes iF tHeYrE sTeALiNg tHoUgH!! It’s aLl iNsUrEd!!!” - Biden Voters
^ you sound like someone who'd love to bing bing some people over a candy bar.
Look you can think the posters an idiot and still be a favor of shooting shoplifters.
Shooting shoplifters stealing from billion dollar corporations. . . over food? The same corporations accused of wage theft all across the nation?
Is it really about the shoplifting or is it the personal justification needed to don your imaginary cape to use your weapons on someone and make yourself out to be a good guy?
Look, I'm not going to sit around and shoot shoplifters myself. That's why we hire people.
But I have noticed in jurisdictions where they give shoplifters 11 months in County when they're caught shoplifting tend to have a lot less shoplifting issues than jurisdictions where they say you go right ahead young man.
If food is being stolen, then it's a failure of the government.
I'm all for it enforcing laws as long as the punishment fits crime. I also feel it should be applied equally, but it rarely happens. White collar criminals do a ton more widespread damage, but seem to get away with it and even still end up with a net positive of what they stole as the fines and punishments don't amount to what they took.
You sound like someone who puts pronouns in their bio
This sounds especially funny coming from someone who mixes up a contraction with a pronoun. You really don’t like pronouns, I see.
Why would anyone buy anything other than prescription meds at Walgreens. Their other stuff, including over the counter meds, are way over priced.
Personally, all my prescriptions are delivered by capsule and everything else is the local grocery store.
Local pharmacy is still pretty important. What if you need an antibiotic next day? What if you have a question you want to ask the pharmacist?
Yeah, I’m in a major metro with a bevy of pharmacies within a quick drive (and an unknowable more in a I NEED THE RX NOW drive time) and the number of times I’ve had trouble sourcing things for fairly common issues - conjunctivitis, oral antibiotics, etc - is … not trivial. And asking then parent of young child me to just wait for it to come in the mail while my kid is suffering … nah.
Totally understand the pain, Walgreens has been reducing quantity on hand to razor thin margins
It's not MAIL. It is delivery. If you order it before 10pm. And they have it in stock, you get it that night. Otherwise, like any pharmacy you get it when they do.
As far as a pharmacist. They have a 24/7 pharmacist on call. Not until the store closes. It's a free call.
Ahhh sounds like universa healthcare might put some pressure on pharmaceutical companies to adhere to certain standards.
Sounds like a pretty unique set up. Most people Can’t get that
Mostly in Big cities, New York, Atlanta, Boston, DC, etc.
But why pick a chain when the family owned ones are so much better?
We don't have a Walgreens locally. But... We also don't have a local non-chain. That closed a few years ago. And... Apparently the rite aids are closing. So... The other single chain left will, soon be the only one left.
Which is to say, not everyone has choices.
In my case, I work for Kroger, who uses their own in-house PBM (Kroger Prescription Plans) for their employee coverage. Conveniently, KPP only works at Kroger pharmacies, something even CVS doesn't have the balls to attempt.
I have to wonder what external companies have been suckered into KPP, as it looks like they do offer plans for other businesses to offer their employees.
Why do people pay $18 for a beer at the ball game?
Because they don’t have any other option. Everywhere I’ve seen a Walgreens there’s a grocery store right across or down the street. Or a gas station convenience store. Walgreens isn’t competitively priced (much like CVS lately), so nobody is going in for an impulse soda or snack.
Honestly going to Walmart's is often a better choice.
Is it though? Lots of low quality garbage.
I'm not a big Walmart Shopper by any means. My girlfriend is more than I am, but apparently, over the last 5 years since the pandemic, the quality, at least in clothing, has gotten a lot better.
I also think they're a legitimate grocery store source as well. Certainly more solid than something like a Target.
Funny I find target a better choice over Walmart.
Is a Walgreens much more convenient than a grocery store or Amazon? Certainly sometimes but...
Location, location, location
I don't know. They pay $11.50 in a bar. I don't drink.
I don't know why people do dumb things.
The point is, and remains, that things other than meds are not Walgreen's original core business. Perhaps, the reason they are not profitable is because they have so much inventory on over-priced items that people can find for way cheaper at the grocery store across the street.
I buy candy there
lol same. Top tier candy isle
lol same. Top tier candy isle
Probably just a trick of the phone (voice to text does this to me frequently) but I just have to say..... it's "aisle" (for those rows of merch in stores) not "isle" (an island in the ocean).
Toothpaste? Shampoo? Makeup? Chocolates? A pen? Lotion? Pain killers? The list goes on……is everyone going to target/walmart now?
The convenience factor is a big part of why people shop at Walgreens for more than just prescriptions. It's handy to grab everything in one stop, especially if you're already picking up meds. But yeah, for non-prescription items, it's often cheaper to shop around or buy online. Maybe Walgreens could improve by offering more competitive pricing or exclusive deals to keep customers coming back for those items too.
In some areas, after they put the local pharmacy out of business, they also put the local stores out of business as well. At work it is the only retail establishment aside from fast food vendors who sell a range of products. And it is not like I work in a remote area in the mountains. This is Lower Manhattan, NYC. We have fast food establishments, restaurants, dry cleaners, wine shops, gyms, banks, phone companies, newstands and after Walgreens went under, which was directly across the street, CVS. My dentist and Dr. used to route my prescriptions to these guys and I eventually switched to my local, non chain pharmacy.
One of our CVS’s is 24hours. Not the pharmacy but it makes a big difference for the sake of convenience. It’s basically a 7/11 with an occasional pharmacy. It is more about the location and hours then anything else
fyi Alcon Optifree Contact Lense solutions are usually the cheapest at walgreens /shrug
Well, between them and CVS, they have stores across the street from each other and on every other block in some cities. Way overbuilt
growth
If you ain’t growing, you’re shrinking!
Walgreens isn’t what it once was. It’s a convenience store with a pharmacy attached. That’s not to belittle the workers. They are doing the best with what they have.
Walgreens isn’t what it once was. It’s a convenience store with a pharmacy attached.
What was it before? Convenience store with a pharmacy is all I've ever known of Walgreens.
They also had a photo lab attached.
Some still do
That’s all it’s ever been for me and I worked for one in high school.
and Walgreens sells neither gasoline nor tobacco so not really a great convenience store either
Walgreens does sell tobacco, at least around the Austin TX area. It’s CVS that stopped a few years back.
Last I checked, they still sell tobacco products.
It's CVS that cut tobacco
Gasoline is a break-even for most C-stores and really functions only to get people in the store so they hopefully buy something profitable ... like tobacco.
that’s a popular misconception the gas station industry is all too happy to let perpetuate. average rack to retail gas margin nationally is 30cpg. On an average fill that’s $3.90 margin per fill. Some markets are tighter than others but some are much, much more lucrative. As well many gas stations have leaned in to diesel which averages upwards of 60cpg nationally.
Exactly, even if it was $.05, the daily volume is huge.
The margins in convenience store products is not huge because the manufacturers take all the margin. A 12 pack of Coors Light sells to retail at $11, and the price is often $10.99. The manufacturers’ take is that people come to the store for the product and not the store. All the major brands - Gatorade, cigarettes, vapes, blunts, sodas - all work like this. Station owners have to work really hard to find items that they can actually make margin on.
Man, that’s a nice little skim off the top for something the customer has to take care of on their own.
That’s really interesting, do you have a source?
Good I hope they go under. Walgreens is the worst and got extra shitty during and after covid. The few near me all have had now hiring signs since covid. The pharmacy staff has just been a nuthouse with poor pharmacy techs going through different levels of hell and stress. All the CVS stores closed near me and were replaced with Walgreens and were noticeably worse. Over the years independent pharmacies have been driven out of business and are a rarity now. I refuse to shop at walgreens or get my rx there.
They have deals with major insurance carriers. It was one of the things that I hated about my old insurance that the only pharmacy that we could use was Walgreens.
Mine now makes me pick EITHER Walgreens or CVS. Never before has it mattered, anything within network was fair game.
Mine currently accepts only Walgreens or this shitty mail-order prescription delivery service. I hate it so much.
Part of the problems is just better options to get your Pharmaceuticals at whether it's your local Public's grocery store or Costco or Amazon.
Yeah! Eff those quarter million employees! Because you have bad experiences in your area.
Most of the stores will be replaced by functional businesses that will also employ people.
It’s because Walgreens and CVS and RiteAid have been focused on turf wars, not on serving the community.
If any one of them opens a store the other two will open a store in a quarter-mile radius. Now all three are not profitable, while there are entire towns and neighborhood in cities that have ZERO drugstores.
It’s a dumb competition, where ‘winning’ never meant being profitable — it meant your competitor was unprofitable.
The actual customer needs were very clearly 5th or 6th down the list of goals.
Unprofitable? What are you yapping about. CVS Health annual gross profit for 2023 was $140.678B, a 12.03% increase from 2022. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CVS/cvs-health/gross-profit#:~:text=CVS%20Health%20annual%20gross%20profit,a%2011.06%25%20increase%20from%202020.
Net income (actual profit) for CVS was 8 billion off of 350 billion in revenue. Gross profit comes before a number of business expenses. The stores are likely not highly profitable, but I would hazard to guess that their PBM business is doing well.
I’m not talking about the top-line corporation — the article is very clearly about Walgreens closing many locations. This is because many of those locations were built almost on top of 2 other drugstore chains, and are yes… unprofitable!
The wal greens down the street from me is in the same shopping center as a big grocery store, which also has a pharmacy, more selection, lower prices and self check out.
There are three Walgreens within 1.7 miles of where I live.
Edit: four existed before Covid
They have way overbuilt the number of stores.
I feel like Walgreens is another example of MBA thinking being wrong. The focus on strategy and short term value rather than actually doing the thing you’re good at and thinking long term is causing its downfall.
Strategy might not be operational effectiveness, but a company pursuing strategy at the expense of operations is how you lead to a long term downfall of major orgs.
Steve Jobs called it out years ago. The sales and accounting people get in positions of power and run companies instead of product people.
Then companies stop worrying about the product and user experience and focus everything on squeezing every last cent they can out of the least amount of effort.
Nike is going through this right now. Mark my words it will barely exist in 20 years.
I predict they will blame shoplifting as part of the ongoing corporate effort to socialize their in-store security.
They will blame the shoplifting homeless in San Francisco for closing 2800 stores.
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It's a moral panic manufactured by retail lobbying groups specifically to urge local governments to provide police to large retailers' stores. Shoplifting rates in 2023 were lower than they were in 2019.
I don’t know if those stats can be trusted. Newsom claimed crime in CA has been lowest ever. And, nobody who lives here buys that. It reeks of fabricated stats…
Do you have a better stat? Anecdotal info from a bunch of people being influenced by a bunch of sources is hardly reliable
Personal experiences don't matter? I should only blindly trust Gavin Newsom's numbers?
Personally I had my best year financially last year, would you say it’s reasonable to assume that was a universal truth?
If personal experiences are taken into account, the last time I’ve personally witnessed someone shoplifting was in 2016. I’m glad that crime has gone down and stayed down for the last 8 years
Yeah, you're describing a moral panic. Conspiratorial thinking is part of it.
Well, in all fairness, they legalized theft so it's no longer a crime.
Sure, when you lump in all of rural America the rates are dropping. Look at rates for Los Angeles, New York , Chicago, and San Francisco. Increases of 50-60% since 2019. Just more Liberal cherry picking of data and taking it out of context. Just look at your voting demographic and their numbers not please. Leave the rest of us law abiding citizens out of it.
lol so you think the stats for 10% of the country can meaningfully impact the other 90%. Let’s have a chat about statistics. Rural America has been and continues to die. From a population metrics perspective it continues to fade into obscurity
Ok, then shoplifting is an even bigger problem and isn’t decreasing in any meaningful way which is what I was saying. Look up the shoplifting stats from any major city. They are skyrocketing. It is not a false narrative as implied by the person I responded to.
You’re right about that, but your little aside about rural America is also wrong. The rates of shoplifting have seemingly increased across the board even in states without much in the way of major cities
You’re not even American, so I wonder where you’re getting this idea from. I’m guessing it’s the “news” lol. I promise you shoplifting is far from the thing that’s destroying America. But whatever makes you feel superior to the “poor fucks” I suppose.
The surge in shoplifting is a symptom, not a cause. The more desperate and marginalized people become, the more crime will increase. Why should poor people play by the rules when the wealthy don’t?
Walgreens used to have a sales flyer in the newspaper every Sunday, and they occasionally had pretty good loss leaders that would bring me into the store. Now, you have to go into the store to get a flyer instead of having it delivered in the paper -- and I never once have actually done that. Have not been into their store since then.
You actually get a newspaper? And you don’t realize you can get their ad on line on their site and you don’t have to go in.
You could close half of the stores and there still would be one on every other block.
Also insurance companies no longer want you going to a drug store for prescriptions. That immediate drug your doctor prescribes is fine, anything filled monthly your insurance company gets you to switch to their mail delivery.
They even get your doctor to approve 90 day supply so you only need to get your medications every 3 months.
Insurance companies cut out the middle man. CVS even purchased a health insurance company.
The only people going to the local pharmacy are the young people who need a prescription cream and old people who hold up the pharmacy line.
If you’re going to need the med for more than 90 days it makes sense to get a 90 day supply instead of 30 or less and is typically cheaper. That was one of the shitty things pharmacies would do is just give you a reduced or small amount because they don’t carry a lot of stock and they can charge you again/more when you come back to refill
Most of the reasons pharmacies don’t give more than 30 days supply is due to their PBM contracts not allowing it. They force you to use a pharmacy that they own for a 90 day supply. It is not a pharmacy stock issue for most prescription.
Many pharmacies would love to fill it for 90 days as they wouldn’t lose customers to a mail order pharmacy that is owned by the insurance company / PBM / all the other vertically integrated parts of the business.
All the dollar stores are putting the pharmacies out of business. They pop up in rural areas and other under served areas and have a lot better pricing than Walgreens or CVS for the high level convenience store stuff. The Pharmacies can't keep the whole store in business and the huge margins they had on deodorant aren't sustainable next to Family Dollar/ Dollar General/ Five Below/ etc..
Surprised their second rate Walgreens Boots Alliance cronies can't save them.
This looks and sounds a lot like the beginning of the end for Walgreens.
For us it was the prices. A brand new one opened up like 2 blocks away. Even if it was 10-15% more expensive than Target and Walmart and Amazon I would go for the convenience. But daaamn if I didn’t get sticker shock every time. I wondered, “Who buys these items at these prices?” Like pick something. Toothpaste, laundry detergent, bottled water even. Cheaper / better prices almost everywhere I can name. Even 7-11s and gas station marts felt like they had better prices by comparison. Well, that why we stopped going.
the last time we were at Walgreens picking up medicine, we also needed bandaging to wrap the wound. I was surprised that the Walgreens pharmacist himself recommended we go to WinDixie for the other stuff instead, due to the cost at Walgreens. If I remember correctly the same item cost $4 at the supermarket and $17 at Walgreens
HAHA similar experience! I was looking for one of those flat, round batteries. Kind of “niche” I guess so I was just happy to find them. But the guy at Walgreens straight up told me; you might wanna go across the street to Walmart. They’re under $10 there. And yes the Walmart was literally across the street. Well, and that Walgreens is closed and the building is for lease now 🤣
It's amazing these miserable trash hells have lasted so long. Target has everything they have, and more, and a much better experience.
Target is not a convenience store. Are you thinking of walmart?
You think walmart is a convenience store?
No. I mean are you confusing walgreens with walmart?
Obviously not. I have no idea what point you’re trying to make
Just to be clear … comparing target to walgreens is like comparing apples to oranges. Unless you are thinking of walmart which is similar business to target.
Walgreens is a convenience store and they charge a lot more. As they should. Because they are in the business of convenience, not cost efficiency.
You're lost. Walgreens is not a convenience store, it's a drugstore. A convenience store is 7-11, Circle K, a bodega, etc.
Target v Walgreens is not apples to orange because Target has everything that Walgreens has (and more). My original point is that you can avoid Walgreens by simply going to Target.
Aah ok. I have always been told Walgreens is a convenience store. Rite aid is another. And target is a department store plus grocery store.
hard to be profitable when the insurance reimburses you less than the cost to buy the medications from the wholesaler. the front end has issues with theft too.
This has gotten some downvotes but the statement about insurance is true. Insurance and PBMs are absolutely eating pharmacies alive. There’s a reason there are almost no small independent pharmacies anymore
First it was independents, and now the chains are failing. Target sold out a few years ago, Rite Aid is bankrupt, and Walgreen's stock is down like 85% from 10 or so years ago so who knows how much time they have left. It will soon be only CVS's monopoly
That's interesting because there is a ton of them around me, of course we have lots of old people so I guess as long as they take insurance for 65 plus they are good to go.
Many of them also feed the supplement and wellness markets or they compound Semiglutide
Walgreens owns village md urgent care. Which owns cityMd urgent care. Which owns summit health healthcare network.
They’re taking a multibillion dollar write down on VillageMD.
Glad I invested in CVS.
I miss Kerr Drugs
I never understood why anyone shopped at a Walgreens, they're more expensive than Walmart
Walgreens in the early 2000s was really only useful because they were open 24/7, photo development, and they had a pharmacy. Then when everything went 24/7 Walgreens jacked up their prices so you really didn’t want to use them. Photo printing obviously disappeared. But now it’s easier to just go to the grocery store with a pharmacy for most people.
This is going to suck for a lot of people though. In some areas Walgreens is the only place that offers some services.
Remember when they blamed this on theft
There’s a Magic Walgreens I use for my pharmacy visits. It’s right around the corner from a big hospital.
It’s the only Walgreens I’ve ever used that has competent attentive extremely professional and excellent staff. My hypothesis is that because they are so close to the hospital there’s a “hotspot” of activity and interactions with medical folks.
I’m also told that this particular pharmacy is sought after by other employees and the staff there are low-turnover, almost all working there for 10+ years.
This is NOT the closest pharmacy or even Walgreens to my home. But because they have top-notch staff, I won’t go anywhere else.
The Walgreens closest to my home in two separate locations now have each sucked in so very many awful ways. I used to live in the bay area and that local Walgreens sucked so bad I changed to a small “mom and pop” pharmacy 10 miles away since they were highly competent.
And the Walgreens nearest my house screwed up at least 5 times before I gambled and tried the one nearest the local hospital.
So I found the one good Walgreens, but have not found any more. If it’s slated to be closed I’ll be really annoyed. I don’t think that will happen though because I believe it gets A LOT of business due to the nearby hospital.
Healthcare should never be profitable. This is only the beginning
I avoid for high prices and low quality
Maybe they should be more competitive with prices. Always way more expensive than other stores
Yeah, well when you locate your store across the street from a competitors and the competitor’s store has easier access because it was there first and got the better location, what do you expect?
Every time I go to the Walgreens near my house, the prices increase almost every other day. It’s wild. Hope it shuts down and something better comes.
They haven’t adjusted their prices to be competitive to online and dollar general stores.
The Walgreens near me locks up diapers, body wash, deodorant, dishwashing liquid and more. Yet they don’t like things like makeup, one of the most commonly stolen things.
When it takes me 10+ minutes to just get some damn soap. I will go to CVS or a grocery store where it’s not locked.
Fuck Walgreens.
You mean implementing coupons for prescription medicine didn't right the boat?
Feel free to go under. Let people get prescriptions from a local store.
Oh well. Most of them are getting looted like crazy as well. Sad.
Hmmm…I wonder why this is
Remember when they were blaming all the store closings on shoplifting?
American cities won’t miss Walgreens. Let them close and leave the mom and pop shops.
Pharmacy loses money. Insurance doesn’t even cover the cost of many medications. They probably tried to make up the loses by overcharging for grocery items. But no one was buying that either. This is the result.
Walgreens and cvs are just convenience stores rhat sell prescription meds.
If they didn’t overcharge so much, I’d buy more.
Considering the amount of shit I've seen get stolen I'm not terribly surprised. Although they were great at not giving us our benefits or appropriate pay then slashing hours to make up for "lost profits" while giving the executives tens of millions of dollars in bonuses.
Many businesses operate like this, for example Walmarts in rural parts of the country aren’t profitable.
The government pays Walmart subsidies to keep those stores open, among other things.
Edit: So many downvotes, y'all can't handle the truth huh?
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You’re completely false.
The downvotes are because YOU ARE WRONG. Your answer is factually incorrect. Allow me to quote you:
The government pays Walmart subsidies to keep those stores open
If you wanted to make an honest, intelligent argument for Walmart receiving taxpayer money, you’d point out the fact that 1 in 10 employees of Walmart receives government food stamps / food assistance.
Which subsidies by which governments?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1230
Here's one example.
The Federal government grants money to the states to distribute to retailers as they see fit to avoid food deserts.
This is still in legislation, but they also receive reimbursement for food stamps, which is in place.
Sooooo not an example, although it may be a future example?
What are your real intentions? Playing games with semantics is not going to discredit the truth.
My link shows current amounts of money various states give to Walmart.
This information is easy to obtain, do your research man.
Lol. The difference of an example and hypothetical is not semantics.
My link shows current amounts of money various states give to Walmart.
Your link does not show that. That is a pure lie.
He’s replying to the link by cubgerish not yours
What're you on? I'm responding to someone who answered a question with a non-answer.
Forgive me for assuming then, just wanted to point out that while his answer may not be accurate, it does not discredit facts.
Not precisely, but they do receive benefits from essentially impoverishing their employees, which isn't exactly what he suggested.
You get how you should have just said no it doesn't actually answer the question, right?
User deleted comment
4d
I'm actually their butler, they're very nice.
Just so we're clear attacking the validity of a point is not the same as attacking the spirit of the point or the overall argument. This is how facts become "facts" because people believe any dissent is an attack on the in-group.
That list looks like a bunch of tax-financed new development, not subsidies for unprofitable stores to stay open.
Correct, my first point was to show that Walmart does get money from government. It’s something that should be pointed out when discussing welfare.
We are upset about giving money to the poor and elderly, what about billion dollar corporations?
I was going to make a second comment covering the profitability of Walmart by State and City.
Unfortunately it’s shareholder information that’s distributed over several links and pages, I’m not a journalist so I need time.
But like I said in my first post, Walmart gets money from government for many things including unprofitable stores.
How does Walmart get subsidies?
Not just Walgreens - happening to all kinds of stores in almost every major big urban city in America... When the shoplifting / theft level reaches a certain point (which is not a whole lot) there ceases to be any level of profit - which pays for employee wages, rent, utilities, etc... This is reason enough to quickly shut down that location...
Bidenomics
The Walgreens near me probably would be profitable, if their pharmacy could process more than one customer every 10 minutes. They are the slowest-moving humans to be found outside the DMV.