Retail Watchers

CVS is taking these files. Not clear if they will run the pharmacies in the stores.

I am not clear since many Shop Rites are franchises, were the pharmacies being run by the corporation and not the store franchisee?

Sounds like they are just moving the customers to existing CVS locations. One article I saw was interviewing one of the co-op members (basically the same as franchises, except that they have some voice in how Wakefern operates) and they were describing what they planned to put in place of the pharmacy.

So, at least some of the closed pharmacies are in member stores, others may be in the stores Wakefern itself operates as a subsidiary - SRS (ShopRite Stores). As far as I've seen no full listing was published yet on what ones are closing.

It might make sense that the corporate arm (or the subsidiary) actually did the pharmacies, rather than having to have a dozen or more smaller entities dealing with setting up the needed process to have a pharmacy in a small number of stores.

The articles in Supermarket News https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail- ... pharmacies and elsewhere identify this as Wakefern's decision and that they are the pharmacy operator. We'll probably see more closures like this.

BillyGr wrote: ↑January 28th, 2021, 7:38 am Sounds like they are just moving the customers to existing CVS locations.

With that having been said, were closing decisions made based on proximity of the closing pharmacies to CVS locations?

TW-Upstate NY wrote: ↑January 30th, 2021, 8:34 am

BillyGr wrote: ↑January 28th, 2021, 7:38 am Sounds like they are just moving the customers to existing CVS locations.

With that having been said, were closing decisions made based on proximity of the closing pharmacies to CVS locations?

I haven't seen any listing of which ones are being closed. However, just taking a quick look at the ones here around Albany, none of them show up with a pharmacy so that must mean a couple of these are included (they had closed ones in Albany and I think Niskayuna before - not sure what they did at that time, but both have reasonably close CVS locations).

The other two (Colonie and Slingerlands) have CVS that would work, but not exactly close (the Wolf Road for Colonie and Delmar for Slingerlands are probably closest - maybe 5-10 min trip with traffic in both cases, depending on how well you know the area, back routes etc.).

The newest store (North Greenbush) didn't install a pharmacy when it opened.

Hudson (the next closest to the south) still shows a pharmacy. That store has only had one since they moved to a former Price Chopper and took over the pharmacy that store had, so it must have done better enough to stick around. There is also a CVS about 2-3 minutes from this one.