Walgreens to close 1,200 US stores | Hacker News Reader

Walgreens to close 1,200 US stores

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13 pointsLinuxBender8 comments

I'm not sure what role these stores play anymore. The downtowns where they served as a convenience store have been hollowed out by office closures and the lack of commuting employees. Prescriptions are increasingly fulfilled by mail order or in a larger store like Target, Walmart, and Costco. Online sales have taken over all of the things that Walgreens and CVS could claim to specialize in, but cheaper with a bigger selection. So there is little reason to make a trip specifically to these stores.

How much of this is due to theft? If you ask someone on the right I'm sure they'd say a lot, and someone on the left would say hardly at all.

Here’s an article [1] quoting Walgreens’ CFO who, on an earnings call in early 2023, offered that Walgreens had in prior quarters likely overblown the level of shrink they were experiencing and expected to experience (“shrink” is the industry term for lost revenue due to theft and other causes).

Obviously this is more than a year ago, so it’s possible the facts on the ground have changed. However, this is reasonable evidence that at least as of a year ago, their shrink numbers were enough to be downplayed on an earnings call with investors.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopliftin...

My experience with Walgreens is that the stores are woefully understaffed, the product selection is poor, and what product they do have is ridiculously overpriced. As for the pharmacy part of the store, the staff are constantly overwhelmed, and you're guaranteed to stand around waiting for help even when you're the only person in the store.

I've seen this scenario repeated over and over again at several of my local Walgreens stores. I'm not surprised they're in financial difficulty.

I think that was mostly debunked, including from statements from Walgreens itself. This isn't super recent, and perhaps things got worse after this, but in 2023 both they and 3rd party sources basically admitted that the theft story was overblown.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...

> A Walgreens executive said this week that the company, which cited “organized” shoplifting as a reason to close five stores in San Francisco in October 2021, might have overstated the effect of theft on its business.

> “Maybe we cried too much last year,” James Kehoe, the company’s chief financial officer, said during a Walgreens earnings call with investors.

> Walgreens received national attention in October 2021 when it announced that it was closing five stores in San Francisco, citing shoplifting as the reason for the closures. In June 2021, a video of someone shoplifting from a San Francisco Walgreens on his bicycle and, with a garbage bag filled with stolen merchandise, riding past a television news reporter and security guard, drew millions of views.

> The San Francisco Police Department’s data on shoplifting did not support Walgreen’s explanation for the store closings, according to an October 2021 analysis by The San Francisco Chronicle. The analysis said that while not all shoplifting incidents were reported to the police, one of the stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018.

However, I do think some neighborhoods that might have seemed like good places to put a store years ago but which today are less likely to attract casual shoppers. If you're worried your car will be broken into while you're in the store, you're less likely to go there, you'll get out quicker, you won't make that impulse purchase, etc. So there can be crime-related financial impacts even if Walgreens itself isn't stolen from all that much.

In San Francisco, all the Walgreens and Safeways have been increasing how much stuff they keep locked behind plexiglass. You can’t get to it. It’s irritating as a shopper. Sometimes you just leave while waiting. Mostly now, you just order on Amazon instead.

Of course their inventory shrink isn’t rising if they increasingly lock stuff up

Probably more to do with consolidation

Jeez I switched to walgreens for my prescriptions after rite aid did this. I guess it’s time to get a Costco membership

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