Walgreens and locking shelves

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storewanderer
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Walgreens and locking shelves

Post by storewanderer »

I was in the downtown Reno Walgreens today. This is a very high volume but also very troubled store, the primary customers are transient types, some innocent tourists, and a lot of homeless people. It sits atop the freeway. The parking lot is urine stained, perimeter of the lot is full of trash (and now weeds since Walgreens has cut off groundskeeping services where they can to save money), and store always has bums out front.

I have not been in this store in a while so I am not sure when this happened.

The number of locking shelves in this store is more than I've ever seen before in a Walgreens. There are far more locking shelves in this than any Walgreens I've gone to down in San Francisco. There are so many things locked up in this store. The freezer doors to Ice Cream are locked up and you have to press a call button for ice cream. Ice cream? Also one of the energy drink cooler doors was locked but you could open either neighboring door and access many items there. Also locked up in the food area are drink powders, beef jerky, and for some reason giant size Hershey Bars (the ones that cost about $2) are all locked up. Also all single serve candy bars have plastic clickers in front of them so you have to move the loud clickers to access the product. Yet higher cost chocolate bars are on the same aisle, not locked up, nor covered by clickers.

Aside from that there are locking shelf hooks all over the place throughout the store. There are also locking shelves for various items, on every aisle; random OTC items are locked up, also lower value items like body wash, razors, certain toothpastes, , but then also a whole lot more. Then many items that do not have locking shelves have the shelf clickers covering over where the items are kept, such as liquid hand soap.
pseudo3d
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Re: Walgreens and locking shelves

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote:I was in the downtown Reno Walgreens today. This is a very high volume but also very troubled store, the primary customers are transient types, some innocent tourists, and a lot of homeless people. It sits atop the freeway. The parking lot is urine stained, perimeter of the lot is full of trash (and now weeds since Walgreens has cut off groundskeeping services where they can to save money), and store always has bums out front.

I have not been in this store in a while so I am not sure when this happened.

The number of locking shelves in this store is more than I've ever seen before in a Walgreens. There are far more locking shelves in this than any Walgreens I've gone to down in San Francisco. There are so many things locked up in this store. The freezer doors to Ice Cream are locked up and you have to press a call button for ice cream. Ice cream? Also one of the energy drink cooler doors was locked but you could open either neighboring door and access many items there. Also locked up in the food area are drink powders, beef jerky, and for some reason giant size Hershey Bars (the ones that cost about $2) are all locked up. Also all single serve candy bars have plastic clickers in front of them so you have to move the loud clickers to access the product. Yet higher cost chocolate bars are on the same aisle, not locked up, nor covered by clickers.

Aside from that there are locking shelf hooks all over the place throughout the store. There are also locking shelves for various items, on every aisle; random OTC items are locked up, also lower value items like body wash, razors, certain toothpastes, , but then also a whole lot more. Then many items that do not have locking shelves have the shelf clickers covering over where the items are kept, such as liquid hand soap.
When you have a store where the majority of the impulse buys are locked up, it's time to close up shop or really rethink things. Does this store not have some sort of loss prevention crew? Are there enough employees to actually unlock things? Usually drug stores have minimal amount of employees on hand. If not that, then the whole store might as well be off-limits (something like a catalog showroom--you order from a kiosk, employee brings it from the back).
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Re: Walgreens and locking shelves

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote:When you have a store where the majority of the impulse buys are locked up, it's time to close up shop or really rethink things. Does this store not have some sort of loss prevention crew? Are there enough employees to actually unlock things? Usually drug stores have minimal amount of employees on hand. If not that, then the whole store might as well be off-limits (something like a catalog showroom--you order from a kiosk, employee brings it from the back).
The store may be profitable with these items locked, and someone freely available to unlock. Most Walgreens stores just don't have the budget for full-time Loss Prevention. They are full of cameras, and they can use them as evidence once someone is caught, but they just can't sit and watch them full time.

Also, I've seen Walgreens and CVS keep high volume, high crime stores open simply because the volume outweighs the loss of shoplifting. It may be the issue here. Is this a 24-hour store, or close to a hospital?
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