New Kerr hybrid merges clinical, convenience
SANFORD, N.C. —Kerr Drug’s newest store prototype is one of the most unique formats in all of drug store retailing: a blend of leading-edge, pharmacy-based clinical-care concepts with a full-scale drug store and a company-owned café and coffee shop.
As such—and this comes as no surprise to the feisty North Carolina company’s many fans and observers—the new store marks another bold assertion by the industry’s leading clinical-care advocate of community pharmacy’s rightful place among the nation’s healthcare professionals. But it also marks something else: a hard-won acknowledgement by the 102-store chain of the stubborn long-term realities that still determine the drug store marketplace.
As Kerr chairman, president and chief executive Tony Civello acknowledged, broad selection, effective merchandising, competitive prices and shopping convenience still swing plenty of weight with consumers. And particularly for a pharmacy chain that has staked its future on the high-cost, risky frontier of pharmacy-based patient care, a healthy and well-stocked front end can still mean the difference between a daunting financial high-wire act and a profitable retail business.
Based on the enthusiastic response from local customers on opening day, Kerr ‘s new one-stop health and convenience strategy could be a winner.
At the ribbon cutting to mark the store’s grand opening Nov. 20, Civello and other Kerr leaders were buoyed by big opening-day crowds, who took advantage of a slew of free health screenings and other specials.
“We now have a choice of store prototypes we can use to fit the needs of any location,” said Bill Baxley, senior vice president of merchandising and marketing.
Kerr officials are calling the newest drug store and Community Healthcare Center a hybrid. At 16,000 square feet—the largest retail unit opened yet by the Raleigh, N.C.-based chain—the new store blends all the company’s retail concepts in health care, disease management, traditional drug store merchandising, convenience and even coffee shop retailing.
Located about 35 miles southwest of Kerr’s headquarters, the new store marks the expansion to a second location of the Kerr Community Health-care Center, which debuted two years ago in Lenoir, N.C. Fully half the store’s interior is devoted to expanded clinical pharmacy services, with separate offices for private one-on-one patient services, intervention and education performed by such health professionals as a physician’s assistant, clinical pharmacists, weight loss/ nutrition specialists, and respiratory therapists.
Kerr has allocated areas throughout the new center to cardiac and lung health, women’s care, advanced skin and foot care, breast-feeding support, and other specialty departments. A complete line of health screenings also will be available, including cholesterol, bone density, artery disease, glucose, respiratory, and blood pressure.
The hybrid also features a large-scale, mid-floor “Healthy Living” durable medical equipment section for patients needing walkers, hospital beds, mobility and safety equipment, and home healthcare items.
The front-end side of the store is there “to pay the bills,” but “our focus is on chronic disease management,” Civello said at the opening.
“The profession of pharmacy has to have a much bigger stake in the management of chronic disease. And how we get there has to be well thought out,” Civello told Drug Store News. He called the new hybrid store “another step to attracting patients with chronic disease.”
“It’s high-end, high-touch health care,” explained Mark Gregory, vice president of pharmacy and government relations.
The store requires a high level of staffing, both professional and otherwise. Among its 50 to 60 employees: a clinical pharmacy coordinator, a pharmacy resident from Campbell University’s school of pharmacy, a large complement of staff pharmacists and technicians, and a specialist in durable medical equipment to help patients with home-health care supplies and billing for Medicare Part B and private insurance.