Walgreens permanently closes multiple stores in California... with 1,200 more on the chopping block

Walgreens is pressing up with plans to unopen stores

The struggling pharmacy elephantine antecedently announced plans to close implicit a 1000 stores by 2027. The latest scale-back doomed 5 locations in California. 

Store managers successful Whittier, Los Angeles, Orange, Placentia, and Stanton, California received announcement that their stores volition permanently shutter. 

All 5 stores volition adjacent by the extremity of March.  Walgreens hopes to transportation 93 impacted employees to adjacent locations. 

'It is ne'er an casual determination to adjacent a store,' Marty Maloney, a director of media relations for the pharmacy brand, told the Los Angeles Daily News. 

'We cognize that our stores are important to the communities that we serve, and truthful bash everything imaginable to amended the store performance. When closures are necessary, similar those present successful California, we volition enactment successful concern with assemblage stakeholders to minimize lawsuit disruptions.'

The institution didn't instantly respond to Daily Mail's petition for comment. 

Nearly each pharmacy concatenation crossed the U.S. has laid retired plans to shutter stores nationwide. But Walgreens' struggles are peculiarly pronounced. 

Walgreens operates similar a accepted pharmacy successful an manufacture that’s progressively impacted by exertion advancements and changes successful lawsuit behavior.

The retail exemplary successful its pharmacies is two-fold: the stores pull customers by fulfilling prescriptions portion offering a smattering of at-home items astatine higher prices than large-scale stores. 

But customers are changing their habits. 

Instead of opting for higher-priced brick-and-mortar purchases, Americans are progressively purchasing items online. 

Prescription transportation services are besides becoming much popular, reducing ft postulation successful dozens of Walgreens stores. 

Both changes successful the system person threatened Walgreens' bottommost line. But the institution whitethorn beryllium little adept to changes compared to its rivals.  

CVS, its biggest competitor, has greater scale, giving the marque greater leverage to negociate prices with insurers and healthcare providers.

Walgreens operated astir 8,000 earlier the slate of closures. CVS has implicit 9,000. 

Walgreens is besides much reliant connected retail essentials similar snacks and household goods — a concern conception that has been losing profitability. 

Front-end income correspond implicit a 4th of Walgreens' retail operations. CVS reported lone 21 percent of its income travel from user goods. 

A spotlight shone connected the manufacture successful October 2023, erstwhile different competitor, Rite Aid, filed for bankruptcy. 

The company, struggling with mounting indebtedness and litigation implicit its alleged publication to the opioid epidemic, shut down 150 'underperforming' stores aft the filing. 

Rite Aid has since emerged from bankruptcy, but besides features a greatly reduced store headcount. 

There are present astir 2,000 Rite Aid locations successful the U.S.  

Walgreens' CEO, Tim Wentworth, said the marque has plotted a turnaround and doesn't expect to record bankruptcy. 

Still, the company's banal terms is trading astir 30-year lows and decreased 65 per cent past year.

'This turnaround volition instrumentality time, but we are assured it volition output important fiscal and user benefits implicit the agelong term,' said Wentworth successful a statement.