Wal-Mart Drive Thru Pharmacy

[TW-Upstate NY]

Wal-Mart is replacing their store in Gloversville, NY with a ground up supercenter a few miles away. According to an article in today's paper announcing the opening date sometime next month, there was mention made the new store will have a drive-thru pharmacy. This is the first I've seen or heard of any Wal-Mart having one. Is this something new for them?

[Alpha8472]

Walmart drive-thru pharmacies are nothing new. They have had them for many years. However, not all stores have them. The reason for this is that customers are more likely to buy more merchandise if they are required to walk inside the store.

Walmart makes more money if customers are tempted to buy lots of products inside the store. Drive-thru pharmacies are expensive to install since they require tube systems to deliver medications to the car or have a window drawer installed.

I have friends who work for pharmacies with drive-thru windows. They say that drive-thru windows are terrible. It takes longer to drop off and pick up prescriptions because you have to send items through the tube. You have send the prescription through the tube and have the patient sign documents. It takes longer and wastes time for everyone. Customers buy less merchandise and it makes everything very impersonal.

The only reason why a drive-thru would be an advantage is if there are other competing pharmacies that all have drive-thru windows and Walmart would be losing out on prescriptions if they did not have a drive-thru.

The reason for pharmacies inside of Walmart is that it attracts customers to Walmart to buy more stuff. Take away the shopping and you are left with something that is not as profitable.

[Super S]

Walmart has a drive-thru pharmacy at the new-build Longview, WA Walmart Supercenter on 7th Ave.. It is odd in the fact that the pharmacy is not even located on an outside wall, but toward the center of the store at the edge of the grocery department. Needless to say this one uses a tube system. Oddly enough, the older Walmart in Longview on Ocean Beach Highway, a mid-1990s build, which closed for a year while being converted to a Supercenter, lacks a drive-thru pharmacy, but has a pharmacy as soon as you walk in the door at the front, which is in a different location than it was originally.

From what I can tell, Walmart seems to be experimenting with different pharmacy layouts as they remodel and build new stores.

[Brian Lutz]

The newer Walmart in Federal Way (the Supercenter one, probably about 5-6 years old by now) has a drive-thru pharmacy on the side of the building, but I don't know of any others around here that do. I do know a few Fred Meyer stores have similar drive-thru pharmacies on the front of the building between the two entrances, but generally these use drawers rather than tube systems.

[Alpha8472]

I have friends who work for Walmart and the decision to add drive-thru pharmacies depends on the health and wellness market manager (sort of like district managers). They decide on how much they want to spend on pharmacy remodels and whether to add a drive-thru.

A few years there were options as to remodeling. They could do a cheap remodel with small changes or they could spend more and do a complete remodel to the newest and most expensive layout. The newest layout for the Walmart pharmacy features a more open layout, however some health and wellness managers are cheapskates and don't want to spend money on remodels. Walmart is all about cutting costs so that managers get bigger bonuses. Cut employee hours and you get a bigger bonus. Hire fewer people = more bonus. This often backfires as long lines and long wait times makes customers never want to shop at Walmart again. Simple things like buying fewer pharmacy computers, buying fewer pharmacy printers, etc. is all about cutting costs. However, this is awful since there are not enough computers for employees to use in the pharmacy. How can you help customers if there are not enough computers to use? "I'm sorry, you'll have to wait because there are no computers for me to use to fill your prescription." "I'm sorry, we are too cheap to hire another cashier for the pharmacy even though we have 2 cash registers for our pharmacy. Here. Stand in this single long line of 20 people."

It is ridiculous about all of the cost cutting. Walmart is killing themselves by cost cutting at the expense of long lines.