This varies a lot. Walgreens has many stores that they call a "simple store" where they removed aisles, removed endcaps, and have cardboard marketing signs all over the aisles. These stores removed massive SKUs from ALL categories but many of the GM categories were eliminated entirely.buckguy wrote: ↑September 21st, 2023, 4:43 amWalgreens stocks more GM lines than CVS or RiteAid and despite flat/declining sales, their stores aren't necessarily ghost towns.HCal wrote: ↑September 20th, 2023, 11:09 pmGetting rid of Amazon and Walmart might do it
I know people like to look back at the "good old days" with rose-colored glasses, but the fact is that life was more difficult back then. People didn't have the convenience of online shopping, or even necessarily a big box store to go to. In an urban area like San Francisco, overpriced pharmacy chains might have been the best place to buy general merchandise.
Nostalgia is basically a corruption of history. The GM selections go back to when drug stores, esp. chain drug stores were the only businesses open late every night and were exempt from Blue Laws on Sundays. They benefited from the decline of variety stores but they've been cutting back on this kind of stuff for decades, esp. lines that themselves have been in decline like cards, stationary, and magazines. People sucked up the high prices because it was convenient.
Drug stores in the US have always had odd bits of non-drug business because of circumstance or opportunity---like having refrigeration when others didn't, so they sold ice cream and built up soda fountains, but those businesses didn't necessarily hold up over time, either. Walgreen is willing to try different things---when drug store luncheonettes lost business to fast food, they branched into coffee shops which worked for awhile. They've been in and out of the liquor business in a fairly big way.
Rite Aid has slowly been re-adding back in some of the GM lines they discontinued in 2020. At this point they are almost back to having a hardware/kitchen/light bulb/auto set that is larger than Walgreens. Rite Aid's toy set has also continued larger than Walgreens this whole time (they never cut that) as well as Rite Aid's pet section having probably 10x the space/assortment of Walgreens. Walgreens continues to have a much larger "electronics" assortment on that front wall between photo and tobacco though.
CVS really varies by store. Out west many larger CVS Stores have far more GM than Walgreens.