Safeway Standalone Drug Store

[Alpha8472]

Safeway is going to take over the independent Chimes Pharmacy in Berkeley, California on July 23, 2011.

This is the first time that I have heard of Safeway operating a standalone drug store.

It is a small drugstore, but it is a standalone drug store.

It is very close to a Marina Safeway in Oakland that Safeway is trying to replace. Safeway wants to demolish the Marina Safeway and build a much bigger 2 story tall store in its place.

If the new store is approved, the pharmacy will eventually move inside of the new store once it opens.

Why is Safeway buying a drugstore?

Pharmacies are very profitable. The current Marina Safeway is too small to fit a pharmacy inside. Safeway sees the pharmacy as a source of profit, so they bought it.

What I don't like about Safeway is that their pharmacies are not linked. Each Safeway pharmacy keeps separate records. You cannot go to another Safeway pharmacy since the other pharmacy would not have your records.

If you need a prescription transferred to a different Safeway pharmacy, the pharmacist would need to call the other pharmacy and transfer your prescription over the phone. Once it is transferred to the new store, the prescription at the old store will no longer be valid. If you want to go back to your old store, then you would need the other store to call and transfer the prescription back again and the prescription at the other store will then become invalid.

I once went to a Safeway pharmacy for a flu shot. The pharmacist on duty was not qualified to give vaccinations. They told me to come back several days later when a qualified pharmacist would be working. It would have been nice if they had all of their pharmacists qualified to perform a full range of services. I left the store and went to Walgreens instead. All of their pharmacists are qualified to give vaccinations.

[Super S]

Sounds like Safeway is doing this to acquire pharmacy records so that they will have a customer base when the store reopens. My bet is that Safeway will only operate this store temporarily until the new location opens.

Safeway, as well as other retailers, will sometimes take over pharmacy records as independent drugstores, or in some cases chain drugstores, close down.

[tesg]

Yeah, this is a perfectly normal practice. That they're keeping the location for now is unusual, but not surprising given the circumstance.

In the Midwest, Hy-Vee is constantly buying small drug stores, closing them, and transferring the records (and often, the employed pharmacists) to neighboring Hy-Vee Food Stores, or Hy-Vee Drugstores.

[storewanderer]

There used to be a Safeway Pharmacy in Minden, NV. It was open for 3-4 years then closed (files were sold to Rite Aid). It was in a medical building and had a small selection of over the counter items. Safeway was slated for many years to build a new store across the highway but has since abandoned the site as they continue to struggle miserably in Nevada due to NorCal Division's pricing policies.

[VibeGuy]

Wal-Mart (!) operated a standalone pharmacy in a multispecialty outpatient clinic in Coos Bay, OR, of all places. When the lease was up, Safeway moved in. They stayed two years or so, and now Walgreen's is giving it a go.

[JoshAustin610]

In North Wales, PA there's a standalone Genuardi's pharmacy which is part of Safeway; it was originally an independent North Wales Pharmacy that was acquired around 2003 (after the Safeway merger). There is an actual Genuardi's store a few blocks away, but it's too small to house a pharmacy, so they've kept it in it's original spot.