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Kroger and Walgreens launch pilot program to pick up groceries at the pharmacy
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Is Walgreens going to take over Kroger Pharmacy?
Started by BMBiology
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Wow... the amount of **** that they continue to pile on pharmacy amazes me.
JFC this needs to be shared in the pre pharm. We won’t be counseling people anymore, we’ll be checking out their groceries and asking them if they want a a number 5 with XL fries next.
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The real problem with pharmacy and particular retail pharmacy is that we are a one-trick pony. Most customers don't understand that retail pharmacy doesn't make money, the margins are razor thin. Walgreens and CVS make it up in volume. Most people hate shopping and don't to spend as little time as they can in the store. The exception to this is the lonely old retired people who have never better to do with their lives. If a were a pharmacist at Kroger I would be putting in applications to Walgreens.
^Yup, I was recently shown our margins on our scripts where I work. Laughable margins.
Can you explain to me how the margins work? When I look at the amount of money my pharmacy makes (this is purely gross btw) it hovers around 200,000-300,000 a week. I feel like that is a ton of money.
I think its more like free fries with you metformin
I would use it as a good counseling opportunity on the importance of diet.
Big Potato and Big Pharma conspiring together.
Interesting. I thought having highly paid professionals do menial work was limited to government. I personally have no problem loading/unloading trucks and doing other odd jobs that I am ordered to do at times, although I do question if it is the best use of taxpayer money.
Imagine if I gave you 100 dollars but you get to keep 1 dollar. That is low margin. So that store might be grossing 200k to 3000k per week but they are really making 20k or 30k, and that 20-30k has to pay for pharmacist, techs, supplies, utilities, your profit is nothing. Think of it like this, at cvs it cost like 15 dollars in labor to produce one scribe. Lets say that Medicare will only give you 20 dollars that scribe. So right off the back, you are in the hole 5 dollars, might make a little on the drug but you lose money. When Walmart was doing their famous 4 dollar list, they were losing money on every script because the labor alone doesn't cover it. Plus you have to spent 20 minutes on the phone with 83 yr old Mrs. Johnson because she wants to know the name and indication of every pill she already been taking for 20 years. IF you dispense, 10 scribes for a person, you will lose money on some, break even on some and make some profit. But if you don't do enough volume, you lose money. Americans want the best, they want it now and they want it for free.
If this works out in the pilot stores, it's a done deal.
The official announcement will be October 2019 with closers starting as early as April 2020.
The official announcement will be October 2019 with closers starting as early as April 2020.
yes but you will still probably get some annoying questions like "is this where I pick up my groceries? or can you wait a min, let me go grab my groceries first." this will be on the same level of annoyance as "where is the bathroom? and do you guys sell "insert random store product"?
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If I were the CEO of Walmart or Kroger I would be a fool to not sell my pharmacies. Walgreens or CVS can run them at a better profit margin. Pharmacy is a loss leader for a store like Kroger or Walmart why put up with it.
I'm so glad I got out of Kroger this summer and into a privately owned and financially stable hospital. I feel like an entire firing squad had been dodged, not just a bullet.
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Where do you get your information saying its a loss leader? A poster posted a link not too long ago and it showed that the pharmacy was actually used to recuperate money that was lossed in other departments (namely click list and clothing)
And grocery. During inventory time our pharmacy always carried the store. If your inventory is a mess, then yeah....it's definitely a loss leader just like any other department.
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Do you work at a Kroger, do you work at large Kroger? I have worked for both Kroger and CVS and CVS does much more volume. Perhaps things have changed. But if the pharmacy was so profitable, Kroger wouldn't be reducing hours and they wouldn't be partnering with Walgreens. I have even heard some talk that Walgreens might buy their pharmacies like CVS did with Target.
I work for another grocer chain, and it's a similar story for us. The store manager is always telling me the store would have probably closed by now if not for how much money the pharmacy is making. You need to have at least some volume (we average about 200 a day) but not all grocer pharmacies are loss leaders. Now, my old store doing like 100 a day wasn't making a profit.
We averaged around 400+ per day during the slow time, probably close to 500 now. When I first started there we were lucky to do 100 per day and the inventory was a hot mess. The pharmacy had an entire staff overhaul, and the inventory is consistently the best in the entire enterprise. It's hard work to be profitable!
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Yea fixing inventory is key. Ours is in good shape, and other than loss from expired meds, we do pretty well. However corporate calculates our inventory, they always think our inventory is lower than it really is, so our biannual counts tend to result in a 15-20k boost in profit for those months.
