Walgreens Reducing 24 hour Stores (2024)

My pharmacist friend says Walgreens is planning on eliminating many 24 hours stores soon. Also other stores will get drastically reduced operating hours as well.

I find this counterproductive as during the summer people stay out later. It is so hot during the day that people only go out late at night.

In some bad areas with shoplifting problems, we will see stores close at 3 p.m. At least it is better than closing all of those San Francisco stores permanently...

Alpha8472 wrote: ↑July 25th, 2024, 9:59 amMy pharmacist friend says Walgreens is planning on eliminating many 24 hours stores soon. Also other stores will get drastically reduced operating hours as well.

I find this counterproductive as during the summer people stay out later. It is so hot during the day that people only go out late at night.

In some bad areas with shoplifting problems, we will see stores close at 3 p.m. At least it is better than closing all of those San Francisco stores permanently...

What the hell good is a store that closes at 3pm? If the place is losing that much money then just pull the plug. Do you mean 3am? That sounds like it would still be shoplifted.

Based on my very limited review of Walgreens, I have been confused by their choices of 24 hour locations anyway. At least the few I have seen in SoCal seem to be in the more poor neighborhoods or bad neighborhoods and standalone street corners.

CVS seems to focus the 24 hour sites on their better neighborhoods, on main arterials or freeways where they should capture enough foot traffic to be profitable and also crowded enough to discourage the mass shoplifters that plague these stores. CVS also focuses 24 hour sites next to hospitals which makes a lot of sense. One of the busiest CVS in Orange County is a rather small location across the street from Children's Hospital and St. Joseph Hospital. That was the main vaccination store for COVID and was always in stock on vaccines first in the county, and when I went both times they had two pharmacists at all times plus at least ten other techs in what was a jam packed pharmacy room. Those are the kinds of sites that should be 24 hours, not the weird street corner standalones I see Walgreens operating in bad areas.

It really is 3 p.m. They think that shoplifters sleep in and only shoplift in the evenings and at night.

I guess closing early is better than closing the store permanently. The 25 percent of the stores that are unprofitable may actually be true. Closing early might make that 25 percent profitable again by reducing shoplifting.

Alpha8472 wrote: ↑July 25th, 2024, 1:35 pmIt really is 3 p.m. They think that shoplifters sleep in and only shoplift in the evenings and at night.

I guess closing early is better than closing the store permanently. The 25 percent of the stores that are unprofitable may actually be true. Closing early might make that 25 percent profitable again by reducing shoplifting.

They might as well just switch to that Chicago location format where they effectively closed the sales floor and converted it to a pickup counter. Have the return of the early 1900s retail where you go to a counter and tell them what you want then someone shops for you. Sounds more productive than a 3pm close.

Alpha8472 wrote: ↑July 25th, 2024, 4:12 pmI don't know how profitable those pickup only stores are. You would need a lot of employees to run around gathering merchandise for the customers.

Not really. There is software being used by many of these retailers now to batch orders. You'll notice promises like "your order will be ready in an hour" are disappearing. The software starts in aisle one and tells them to grab a bunch of items, then aisle two and so on until they've been through the entire store pulling possibly a couple dozen orders in one trip. Once they are done the software helps them sort into the separate orders and they've now saved over 90% of the labor hours. You're seeing the low payroll box stores that run one employee and one manager doing all their online order pulling with this software, they're no longer staffing order pullers. Walgreens could just block the door with a table as most stores did when online only during COVID and run the store on the same payroll.

No way it could be any less profitable than a store closing at 3pm.

I just noticed that my local Walgreens prescription pharmacy is no longer 24 hours.
The one down the street from me switched from 24 hours to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. 3 months ago. There is now no 24 hour prescription pharmacy in the entire county. There are a few 24 hours Walgreens prescription pharmacies left in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I have read online reviews and many customers are saying Walgreens is unreliable and the local 24 hour stores often close overnight due to lack of staffing. It is really bad these days.

CVS only has about three 24 hour prescription pharmacies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

You guys and your rumor mongering and hysteria. Drug store chains change hours all the time. This has been a discussion point in the past. There are regional shortages of pharmacists and national shortages of techs which probably is the biggest influence of prescription hours and probably influence store hours, as well.

I live within walking distance of 3 CVS 24 Hour locations which don't resemble ClownLoach's description and a quick look at their website suggests that they have 24 hour stores all over the LA area including one in South Central. The same is true in the DC area. As for locations near hospitals....outpatient visits and discharges usually end by the close of a normal business day and hospitals usually try to keep their census down on weekends. Non-urgent ER cases will languish for hours and even all night. You're not going to get a lot of night time traffic because of being near a hospital. Even at mega hospitals, the outpatient labs usually close by 5 and those are another good marker of patient flow---ditto commercial labs like Labcorp. The stores drug near GW and Howard hospitals don't have unusual hours and there isn't one that's truly close to the big Washington Hospital Center/Children's/VA complex or Georgetown's Hospital. CVS had a crazy quilt of hours in Atlanta and still does. The one reliable 24 hour store is near Emory University and even now, it isn't very busy at night and they don't provide overnight prescription service.

At least in DC, Walgreen has fewer and more dispersed 24 hour stores than CVS. I wouldn't be surprised if it's different elsewhere. 24 hour drug stores, as well as super markets have long been raities in many places, particularly in New England and the Midwest, even in larger cities. When independents were more prevalent, they were usually the only ones with 24 hour locations in some of these places.

buckguy wrote: ↑July 26th, 2024, 7:03 amYou guys and your rumor mongering and hysteria. Drug store chains change hours all the time. This has been a discussion point in the past. There are regional shortages of pharmacists and national shortages of techs which probably is the biggest influence of prescription hours and probably influence store hours, as well.

I live within walking distance of 3 CVS 24 Hour locations which don't resemble ClownLoach's description and a quick look at their website suggests that they have 24 hour stores all over the LA area including one in South Central. The same is true in the DC area. As for locations near hospitals....outpatient visits and discharges usually end by the close of a normal business day and hospitals usually try to keep their census down on weekends. Non-urgent ER cases will languish for hours and even all night. You're not going to get a lot of night time traffic because of being near a hospital. Even at mega hospitals, the outpatient labs usually close by 5 and those are another good marker of patient flow---ditto commercial labs like Labcorp. The stores drug near GW and Howard hospitals don't have unusual hours and there isn't one that's truly close to the big Washington Hospital Center/Children's/VA complex or Georgetown's Hospital. CVS had a crazy quilt of hours in Atlanta and still does. The one reliable 24 hour store is near Emory University and even now, it isn't very busy at night and they don't provide overnight prescription service.

At least in DC, Walgreen has fewer and more dispersed 24 hour stores than CVS. I wouldn't be surprised if it's different elsewhere. 24 hour drug stores, as well as super markets have long been raities in many places, particularly in New England and the Midwest, even in larger cities. When independents were more prevalent, they were usually the only ones with 24 hour locations in some of these places.

Do those CVS Stores all three of them have 24 hour pharmacies, or are they just 24 hour front store?

CVS has surprisingly kept a high theft store over in Sparks as a 24 hour front store but it has not been a 24 hour pharmacy for quite some time. I am very surprised the store stays open 24 hours but it must work for them. That CVS also has more locked up than any other in town. Liquor is locked up at ALL hours. Only store in town that does that.

Walgreens recently stopped offering 24 hour operations at its last 24 hour store in Reno. The store is an absolute pit in downtown Reno and has every problem one can imagine. It was 24 hours for both store and pharmacy but lately some nights they did 24 hours pharmacy drive through only as they did not want to open the front of the store due to theft and vandalism problems. Corporate Walgreens looked the other way at management deciding on a whim to lock the doors at 10 PM many nights. They did post a sign that you could order online then go to pharmacy drive through to pick up store merchandise if you wanted that. Irrelevant now as the store is no longer 24 hours. Previous 24 hour Walgreens were in Carson City and at Virginia/Moana. Carson City made no sense as 24 hours but it was their first store in the market in the 90's and they often did 24 hours upon entry to a market to try to capture business. Virginia/Moana in Reno is a busy location but also not the greatest neighborhood and the store used to constantly get robbed overnight; eventually it started to close overnight but there were quite a few armed robberies that occurred.

So when Walgreens ended that last 24 hour pharmacy in Reno the local hospital group "Renown" opened a 24 hour pharmacy in one of its hospitals. What is funny is Renown used to lease space in that hospital to Longs, then CVS, but CVS eventually closed or got kicked out, and Renown took its retail pharmacy operation back again. There was a tiny store space with a 7-Eleven type of set up under CVS and Longs. That worked out well that they got rid of CVS since they now operate it 24 hours.