Retail Watchers

Two in the San Diego area
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... ores-open/
Santa Barbara was bought. I saw that in another article.
Appears other locations, too, from an earlier article
http://www.law360.com/articles/724465/b ... o-cvs-ok-d

This is a very small number of stores. If CVS were serious, they would be opening up stores on major street corners for visibility. These Fresh & Easy locations often are in bad neighborhoods that no one else wants.

The Fresh & Easy in my city was actually a long time drugstore. It was a Thrifty and a Rite Aid for decades. Then Fresh & Easy came in and bought the lease. It was sad, since that location was perfect for a drugstore being down the street from a major hospital. By the way, I live in the city with the former Long Drugs flagship store, and just yesterday they cut the pharmacy hours of the former flagship store. It used to be 24 hours. The customer count at former Longs Drugs store is so dismal now, they might as well close most of them at 9PM. No one bothers to shop there anymore.

CVS is a chain that could do much more business if they took some lessons from the former Longs Drugs chain. However, CVS doesn't have a clue and is wasting money on opening up a few scattered stores here and there that will probably do poorly in the long run.

Alpha8472 wrote: By the way, I live in the city with the former Long Drugs flagship store, and just yesterday they cut the pharmacy hours of the former flagship store. It used to be 24 hours. The customer count at former Longs Drugs store is so dismal now, they might as well close most of them at 9PM. No one bothers to shop there anymore.

Is that the store in the Bay Area they plan to redevelop as a Safeway?

The stores, especially the front end, are such an insignificant part of CVS total revenue that it does not matter much. All they care about is pharmacy and the PBM. I am surprised CVS has kept as many of the former Longs open, in their current size/configuration, as they have. They could cut a lot of them in half and sublease the rest of the space and it would not result in a SKU cut and no customers would notice/care.

pseudo3d wrote:

Alpha8472 wrote: By the way, I live in the city with the former Long Drugs flagship store, and just yesterday they cut the pharmacy hours of the former flagship store. It used to be 24 hours. The customer count at former Longs Drugs store is so dismal now, they might as well close most of them at 9PM. No one bothers to shop there anymore.

Is that the store in the Bay Area they plan to redevelop as a Safeway?

The flagship Longs Drugs store is going to eventually be bulldozed to build condominiums with retail on the ground floor. The parking lot is huge and the store is quite large. All of the land is going to fetch quite a lot of money when it is sold to become condos. Downtown Walnut Creek is slowly being transformed into million dollar condo complexes with retail on the ground floor.

There is another Safeway under construction in another part of the city. That one is being built on land that was once open space and oak trees. A 50 year old Safeway was just bulldozed across the street from it to build another Whole Foods Market.