Retail Watchers

Selling all pharmacy inventory and records to CVS. Will remerchandise former pharmacy areas.
https://progressivegrocer.com/stater-br ... y-business

Only 22 stores had pharmacys, so not a big part of Stater’s business.

How did Stater end up with the SupeRx brand? Don’t forget SupeRx was a part of Kroger at one time.

jamcool wrote: ↑September 11th, 2018, 12:44 pm Only 22 stores had pharmacys, so not a big part of Stater’s business.

How did Stater end up with the SupeRx brand? Don’t forget SupeRx was a part of Kroger at one time.

Because Stater's brand is SuperRx. SupeRx is the Kroger brand.

Stater had already made some exits from the pharmacy business. I noticed probably 5 years ago the otherwise successful store in Santa Clarita (former mid 90's Albertsons) had its pharmacy removed.

It is increasingly difficult to turn a profit with pharmacies with the low reimbursement rates. I'm not sure if Stater was accepting MediCal but if they were, and those scripts were a high percentage of their fills, it is not surprising to me that they decided to exit the pharmacy business.

While 10-15 years ago had I seen this, I would say it was a bad sign for the overall health of the chain, I don't think it is a sign of that in this case, especially in California.

Not familiar with this chain, being from across the country but this seems to be interesting given Target sold out to them three years ago. What could this possibly mean for pharmacies combined with retail stores? Will others pitch in more often at this point?

BatteryMill wrote: ↑September 12th, 2018, 6:57 pm Not familiar with this chain, being from across the country but this seems to be interesting given Target sold out to them three years ago. What could this possibly mean for pharmacies combined with retail stores? Will others pitch in more often at this point?

Unlike Target, which sold their in store pharmacies to CVS but CVS continues to operate those same pharmacy areas within Target stores, Stater Bros. is just selling its inventory and customer prescriptions and transferring it to the closest CVS location. Stater Bros. will then remerchandise the area that was previously a pharmacy within their stores.

CalItalian wrote: ↑September 13th, 2018, 12:35 pm

BatteryMill wrote: ↑September 12th, 2018, 6:57 pm Not familiar with this chain, being from across the country but this seems to be interesting given Target sold out to them three years ago. What could this possibly mean for pharmacies combined with retail stores? Will others pitch in more often at this point?

Unlike Target, which sold their in store pharmacies to CVS but CVS continues to operate those same pharmacy areas within Target stores, Stater Bros. is just selling its inventory and customer prescriptions and transferring it to the closest CVS location. Stater Bros. will then remerchandise the area that was previously a pharmacy within their stores.

Ah yes, I get it now. Thanks for the information.
It's understandable for Stater given that they're not as vast of a chain as Target and such ideas are less detrimental when going up on other retailers. Let's see how it turns out.

Then again this all is quite strange for a chain that is very reputable in this region. But I'm sure they need other areas to focus on in this complicated pharmacy world, for now let's hope the CVS locations will still be convenient to customers...

The pharmacies probably were losing money if they took Medi-Cal. The problem with having so few pharmacies is that Stater cannot get good prices on drugs from the drug wholesalers. The profit on drugs is so low even for patients that do have regular profitable insurance plans. Even if the pharmacies only took profitable insurance plans, there is always a risk of losing money since drugs expire and do not get sold at low volume pharmacies.

Stater is just trying to cut their losses and make a profit by selling pharmacy records to CVS. The way to make profits by having pharmacies, is to do lots of prescriptions and lots of very profitable immunizations. The real money is made by the expensive shots. Those pharmacies at Stater were probably very low volume since grocery store pharmacies carry fewer medications than big pharmacy chains. Most of the time drugs are out of stock and require waits of a day or more. Customers would rather go to a CVS or Walgreens that have drugs available right away.