Walgreens

A typical Walgreens pharmacy

Walgreens NYSE: [WAG] is a convenience store and pharmacy chain in the United States that operates more than 5,000 stores in 46 states and Puerto Rico. It was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1901 and has since expanded throughout the United States. Its headquarters is now located in Deerfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. CVS/pharmacy, Eckerd Pharmacy, and Rite Aid are some of its primary competitors.

This chain started out as a drug store with a fanatically customer-oriented owner, Charles R. Walgreen, Sr., whose theories of low prices and good service allowed the company to spread and set what are considered some of the first modern chain store standards. There is a notable and often told story of how Mr. Walgreen would deliver the drugs to his customers in the early days of Walgreens. A patient would call the pharmacy and place an order for medication, and Mr. Walgreen would fill the prescription, and send it with his assistant for delivery, all while keeping the customer on the phone with small talk conversation. Often times, the prescription would be delivered to the patient while Mr. Walgreen was still on the phone.

At this time the Walgreen family still work throughout Walgreens at all levels.

Walgreens became responsible for many firsts in its field, including:

the first pharmacy chain to use child-resistant prescription caps
the first chain to have a drive-thru pharmacy
the first pharmacy to have all their stores linked via satellite with the introduction of Intercom Plus in 1981.

In addition, Walgreens is the second largest user of satellite data transmission behind the U.S. government. The company also has the oldest running version of Gupta Team developer, using version 1.5 from 1994. Walgreens also uses Oracle database 7.1, an unsupported version of the relational database product.

Walgreens is renowned for having many stores which are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays such as Christmas.

Walgreens also began to feature a photo department. Eventually, the department included a 1-Hour Photo service. Walgreens partners with snapfish so photos can be uploaded from around the United States and printed at any location in under an hour.

Walgreens also is reputed to have helped spread the banana split, which it adopted as its signature dish (drugstores often having, at that time, a soda counter), and even takes credit for inventing the malted milkshake. During this time, the chain also featured hot food, unusual among drug stores. The company operated their own food chain named Wag's, which was based on restaurants that were in some of the larger Walgreens stores. Wag's was sold off to Marriott in 1988 so Walgreens could focus on their primary pharmacy/convenience store business.

Company growth

In its current business model, new Walgreens locations are most commonly set up at the corners of intersecting streets -- literally making it a "corner drug store" similar to how many independent pharmacies evolved over the years in the United States.

Walgreens opened its 3000th store in Chicago in 2000. Its 4000th store opened in 2003 in Van Nuys, California, and most recently Walgreens opened its 5000th store in Richmond, Virginia in October of 2005.

The company plans to have 7000 stores by 2010[Careers Page].

Notes and references

External links

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