Walgreens Prepping To Compete With Big Grocery Stores, Sell Fresh Food
According to Bloomberg, it looks like Walgreen Co. is chatting up food manufacturers like Unilever, Nestle
and Sara Lee – to white-label and also sell at Walgreens stores.
“Everyone is time-starved and we have the most convenient 7,000 locations in the US,” Bryan Pugh, the company’s vice
president of merchandising, told Bloomberg. “They’re on-the-way-home destinations that are easy to get in and out of and will
provide a good value.”
According to the story , Walgreens hasn’t set an exact timetable for the program, but they’re preparing to engage and compete .
Bloomberg stated that ex-Tesco employee Pugh is about to hire someone to run the company’s fresh food program. Wonder where he’ll get his strategic orientation from?
Some analysts are lukewarm. Andrew Wolf, a Richmond, Virginia-based analyst with BB&T Capital Markets said: “If they can get consumer acceptance, this would be good for sales,” said , which recommends that investors buy the shares. “Consumers aren’t used to buying salads from a drugstore chain. That would have to change.”
Target Stores followed a similar strategy in recent years by opening 108 stores in their PFresh chain. They plan to have 350 stores open by late 2010.
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