Walgreens Opens Up A San Francisco Flagship Store

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Alpha8472
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Walgreens Opens Up A San Francisco Flagship Store

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On May 8, 2013 Walgreens opened up its latest flagship store in San Francisco's Union Square neighborhood. This area is a very expensive area for real estate. There are many high end department stores and shops in the area. Walgreens had a virtual monopoly in San Francisco several years ago when they bought all of the Rite Aid stores in the entire city. There was no other competition except for 1 small Long Drugs Pharmacy at the time.

Now Walgreens faces competition since CVS/pharmacy has opened up several new stores in San Francisco.

The flagship store is one of those extra fancy high style drugstores with shiny new floors and a beauty store inside. There is a fresh market that features many grocery items and fresh foods such as sushi, prepared salads, sandwiches, and other prepared meals.

Walgreens is trying to capture the high end rich market that goes to Whole Foods for organic and fresh products.

People in San Francisco have money to spend and there are plenty of tourists willing to spend big bucks buying their overpriced products. The prices are high and border on convenience store price gouging. There simply isn't much competition in area. The few CVS stores aren't very high end and don't have much market share.

The store is nice, but Walgreens still suffers from staffing issues in the prescription pharmacy. There is such a lack of staffing that you often get put on hold for 20 minutes at a time. It is insane trying to talk to a person. They want you to come into the store or order online. Walgreens is such a cheapskate company that they won't hire enough people to staff their pharmacy. These are the people who fill your prescriptions. With the insane understaffing the risks of medication errors increases and could lead to patient deaths with wrong medications, wrong strengths, and other errors.
Alpha8472
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Re: Walgreens Opens Up A San Francisco Flagship Store

Post by Alpha8472 »

Here are some photos of the new Walgreens store:

http://www.drugstorenews.com/slideshow/ ... hip-part-1

The chocolate selection looks huge. I think this is a store that caters to the huge number of tourists that visit the city.

There also seems to be a large variety of freshly baked artisan breads. Walgreens seems to be trying to sell expensive gourmet food products like Whole Foods. There is also a yogurt bar which is quite trendy these days.
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