Walgreens Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Walgreens is a leading pharmacy chain, mail service, and pharmacy benefit manager, with specialty pharmacy operations in 49 states in the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Walgreens is situated in 6,614 locations (as of April 30, 2008) and is one of the two largest drugstore chains in the United States. According to Walgreens, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, it served 5 million customers per day and filled 583 million prescriptions in fiscal year 2007, and expects to have 7,000 stores by 2010.

The Walgreens chain began as a drugstore owned by Charles R. Walgreen, Sr., in Chicago, Illinois, in 1901. By 1915, there were five Walgreens drugstores and several improvements were added to the stores, such as soda fountains and luncheon service. Walgreens also began to make its own line of drug products and was then able to control the quality of the items and sell them at lower prices. By 1916, 19 stores were in operation, all in Chicago.

Walgreens also established its own ice-cream manufacturing plants to match the demand for ice cream at that time. By the mid-1920s, there were about 65 stores with annual sales of $1.2 million. By 1930 there were 397 stores in 87 cities with annual sales of $4 million. By 1934 Walgreens was operating in 33 states with over 600 stores. After Charles Walgreen, Sr., died, his son Charles R. Walgreen, Jr., took over and ran the chain until his retirement.

Charles “Cork” R. Walgreen III took over after Jr.’s retirement in the early 1970s and brought the company through many modern initiatives, including the switch to a computer-based inventory system (bar code scanning). In 1995, Kevin P. Walgreen was made a vice president and promoted to senior vice president–store operations in 2006.

On July 12, 2006, David Bernauer stepped down as chief executive officer (CEO) of Walgreens and was replaced by company president Jeff Rein. Holding degrees in accounting and pharmacy from the University of Arizona, Rein was a pharmacist, store manager, district manager, and treasurer prior to being named CEO and chairman of the board. Greg Wasson, former president of Walgreens Health Services, was named president and chief operations officer.

Other Ventures

Walgreens owned Sanborns, the largest pharmacy chain in Mexico, purchased from Frank Sanborn in 1946, and sold to Grupo Carso in 1985, after a series of economic downturns resulting from the Mexican currency crisis (devaluation of the Mexican peso).

In the 1980s, Walgreens owned and operated a chain of casual family restaurants named Wag’s, a belated attempt to compete with Woolworth’s lunch counters. The Wag’s restaurants were very similar in concept to Denny’s. Walgreens sold most of these to Marriott Corp. in 1988, and by 1991, the restaurant chain had completely gone out of business.

Bibliography:

“Aggressive: That’s Walgreens’ Approach to Growing the Business,” Drug Topics (v.137/23, 1993);
John U. Bacon, America’s Corner Store Walgreens’ Prescription for Success (Wiley, 2004);
“Pharmacy Wars: CVS Is Fighting Walgreens for the Lucrative Prescription Business,” BusinessWeek (3740, 2001);
Walgreens, walgreens.com (cited March 2009).

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