Special Reports Archive

GOUVERNEUR, N.Y. — When you get north of Syracuse, N.Y., you enter a special part of Retail Pharmacy America known as “Kinney Country,” where people know their neighbors and everybody knows their neighborhood drug store.


PINE BLUFF, Ark. — USA Drug grew up in Arkansas, home turf of Walmart. But to characterize the 140-unit drug store operator as David to Walmart’s Goliath doesn’t do justice to this feisty retail innovator, which wields plenty of clout across the nation’s midsection, under a variety of store banners.


POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — A customer visiting any of Fruth Pharmacy’s 25 stores in West Virginia and southern Ohio will find many of the same products and services one would find at any national chain pharmacy; but on top of that, the chain offers a highly personal approach to retailing.
“

The thing that sets Fruth apart is excellent customer service,” Fruth Pharmacy president Lynne Fruth told Drug Store News. “It’s kind of a mix of the best of what the bigger chains can provide with that small-hometown service.”


BOULDER, Colo. — Now 10 years operating its unique footprint in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy has been revving its growth engine lately. Pharmaca is targeting three new store openings in 2011, and between three and six new stores each year through 2015 — a pace that would put the chain at 44 locations in time for its 15th anniversary. “We will be expanding outside of the states in which we currently operate in the future,” said Mark Panzer, Pharmaca president and CEO.


ALEXANDRIA, Va. — It’s a 53-store collection of independents that serves as a model of neighborhood pharmacy to the nation’s lawmakers. That’s in part thanks to the number of Care pharmacies operating in the nation’s capital and in part due to the franchisee-owned group’s proximity to the headquarters of the National Community Pharmacist Association, which is located across the hall.


“[That proximity] really is an opportunity for us to represent independent pharmacy,” said Michael Wysong, Care CEO. 


SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — While pharmacy obviously continues to be an important part of the business, Lewis Drug — which has larger store footprints of 40,000 sq. ft. to 50,000 sq. ft. — is placing an even greater emphasis on the front end, said Mark Griffin, president and CEO of the 33-store chain.


SEATTLE — You can say Bartell is getting into the travel business.


Bartell, which had an estimated $353.4 million in sales in 2009, began operating travel clinics eight years ago and now has them at 10 of its 59 stores. They were the brainchild of pharmacists Jolene Kalmbach and Sharon Woodward, who got the idea after noticing that patients’ doctors often lacked necessary expertise in travel medicine and that commercial travel clinics were overbooked.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Kerr Drug, North Carolina’s regional pharmacy power, had a busy year in 2010. After shedding 11 stores in the Charleston, S.C., market in 2009, the 90-store chain turned its full focus to serving the healthcare needs of North Carolina’s population.


It was, in retrospect, a wise move. Kerr has launched a series of initiatives in pharmacy care, store design, community health services and iPhone technology at a breathtaking pace, easily sustaining its reputation as one of chain pharmacy’s leading innovators.