What Next for Your Drugstore?

Walgreens and Amazon are placing opposing bets on the future of retail pharmacy

- ALEXISKAYSER

WALGREEENS IS PREPARING TO SHUTTER 1,200 stores as Amazon Pharmacy gears up to launch in 20 new cities. The two retail giants are each prom-ising customers a new pharmacy experience, but they have different ideas of what it should look like. It's been a tough 12 months for Walgreens and its drugstore-chain competitors. Walgreens shares have fallen nearly 70 percent, and the company is exploring a deal with private-equity firm Sycamore Partners that could complete early 2025. On the company's October earnings call, Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth announced plans to close roughly 14 percent of locations over the next three years—adding to the hundreds of stores already slashed by each Rite Aid and CVS.

Amid these closures, some pharmacies are prom-ising big on delivery. On October 9, Amazon Phar-macy said it would make nearly half of U.S. customers eligible for same-day medica-tion delivery by the end of 2025. Days later, Walmart launched same-day prescription delivery in six states, an offering expected to reach 49 states by the end of January.

Rick Gates, chief pharmacy officer of Walgreens, isn't surprised to see other major retailers crack the medication delivery space. Three years ago, Walgreens launched its own prescription delivery service—but Gates still sees promise in its brick-and-mortar roots.

“Everybody said mail-order [pharmacy] was going to take away all the customers, delivery is going to take away all customers,” Gates told Newsweek in October. “Consumers have different ways they want to engage in their health care, and I think we just have to make sure that we’re the most conve-nient pharmacy-led organization when it comes to solutions for them.”