Special Reports Archive

Its leaders and member-owners call it “the newest and best independent pharmacy cooperative in the nation.” It’s certainly one of the largest.



The pharmacies of tomorrow are expected to be more service-oriented, and Discount Drug Mart is preparing to be exactly that: a comprehensive pharmacy point of care. 


“We are really marketing pharmacy more now than we have in the past,” noted Tom McConnell, Discount Drug Mart VP and CFO. For every month since an October 2010 implementation of the pharmacy-focused marketing, and a $1.99 generic drug program covering 50 generics, Discount Drug Mart has been realizing comparable-prescription gains, he said. 


A&P may be a supermarket chain, but judging by its string of new health-and-wellness initiatives and strong emphasis on pharmacy, one could argue that it really is a pharmacy with a grocery store wrapped around it.


Through A&P’s network of 200 pharmacies and 605 pharmacists, the company is aggressively looking for ways to improve the health and well-being of its shoppers. And that includes improving medication adherence. 


Target is branching out.


Buoyed by surging profits and customer satisfaction scores, the Minneapolis-based giant is reaching into Canada, preparing a new small-store format for urban areas and going after a bigger share of the nation’s grocery dollar. Target also is spending billions on store renovations, aggressively leveraging a new loyalty card program and growing its commitment to health at its pharmacies and in-store clinics.


Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy is targeting three new store openings in 2011 and between three and six new stores each year through 2015. It’s a pace that would put the company at approximately 44 locations in time for the chain’s 15th anniversary, Mark Panzer, Pharmaca president and CEO, recently told Drug Store News. 


Fred’s last year migrated its more than 300 pharmacies to a more convenient front-of-store position in an effort to boost pharmacy revenue — and it worked. Fred’s 2010 pharmacy sales growth of 4.8% outpaced the discounter’s overall sales growth of 3% for the year. At the time Fred’s began executing against the pharmacy makeover, the company reported that test stores featuring front-of-store pharmacies enjoyed 20% higher sales per square foot as compared with the company’s average.


“After all, we’re from around here, too.” That message, delivered to millions of Texas consumers via the pharmacy page on H-E-B’s heavily scanned website, lies at the heart of the San Antonio-based supermarket chain’s seemingly unshakeable grip on both customers and patients in the Lone Star State. The H.E. Butt Grocery Co. maintains high marks for customer loyalty, innovative patient care services, a quality shopping experience and plenty of healthy choices in its food aisles.


85% — that’s more or less the combined market share for the companies that make up the 2011 DSN PoweRx50, approximately $185 billion of the total $218 billion retail pharmacy industry. Numbering almost 50,000 stores among them, or more than 8-of-10 of all the pharmacies in the United States — BAM! — the DSN PoweRx50 indisputably reflects the true titans of the retail pharmacy industry.