RETAIL NEWS

TAMPA, Fla. — Florida Hospital Express Care at Walgreens retail healthcare clinics are now open in 15 Walgreens locations throughout Tampa Bay.

The Vitamin Shoppe for the past year has been steadily redefining the brick-and-mortar experience for natural health shoppers via its latest store prototype, the Brand Defining Store, currently in nine locations with another five to open soon. “We’re always looking for innovative ways to enhance our customer’s wellness journey, and our BDS stores are one of many examples of how we’re increasing consumer engagement and improving the customer experience overall,” Jason Reiser, The Vitamin Shoppe’s COO, told Drug Store News.

CINCINNATI — Kroger on Thursday reported net earnings of $303 million, or $0.32 per diluted share, and a decline in identical supermarket sales , without fuel, of 0.2% in the first quarter of 2017.

Probiotics are one of the better-selling categories within the VMS space, as evidenced by the number of growing probiotic brands on the top 10 mineral supplement brand chart, which is where IRI captures many of the probiotic SKUs. While market-leading mineral supplement brands Nature Made and Nature’s Bounty certainly include probiotics, i-Health’s Culturelle brand is the best-selling pure-play probiotic brand with $123.1 million in sales on 8.9% growth across total U.S. multi-outlets, according to IRI.

At the Drug Store News/Mack Elevation New General Market Summit, Mack Elevation managing director Dan Mack told attendees, “The New General Market is a mindset — it’s not defined by demography or skin color or religion or sex or sexual orientation — it’s driven by a mindset of inclusion.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Instacart on Wednesday announced a partnership with Wegmans Food Markets that enables the supermarket’s customers to complete their grocery shopping online, and have their orders delivered to their doors in as little as an hour.

WASHINGTON — At the POLITICO Pro Health Care Briefing on Medicaid as a Driver of Care Innovation in the States Tuesday, CVS Health chief policy and external affairs officer Tom Moriarty shared with attendees CVS Health’s efforts to bring better value for patients to the healthcare system.