Special Reports Archive

“After all, we’re from around here, too.” That message, delivered to millions of Texas consumers via the pharmacy page on H-E-B’s heavily scanned website, lies at the heart of the San Antonio-based supermarket chain’s seemingly unshakeable grip on both customers and patients in the Lone Star State. The H.E. Butt Grocery Co. maintains high marks for customer loyalty, innovative patient care services, a quality shopping experience and plenty of healthy choices in its food aisles.


85% — that’s more or less the combined market share for the companies that make up the 2011 DSN PoweRx50, approximately $185 billion of the total $218 billion retail pharmacy industry. Numbering almost 50,000 stores among them, or more than 8-of-10 of all the pharmacies in the United States — BAM! — the DSN PoweRx50 indisputably reflects the true titans of the retail pharmacy industry.



A new partnership with Gold Standard/Elsevier has solidified Thrifty White Pharmacy’s efforts to bring big-city services to its small-town customer base, which is spread across five states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa and Montana. 


The Maple Grove, Minn.-based chain of 84 stores recently licensed Alchemy, a new drug database and decision support solution, for all of its pharmacy and telepharmacy dispensing systems. The new partnership will enable the chain to streamline its prescription filling process and provide drug information to pharmacists instantly.


The typical first-time customer walking into a Hy-Vee store will probably see it as a supermarket, but what makes Hy-Vee stick out is its strong emphasis on pharmacy programs and health and wellness.


Embrace diversity. You don’t have to be Leader to be a leader.


On top of its 101 in-store pharmacies, Schnucks last year opened four specialty pharmacies, offering specialized services to patients.


The pharmacies offer services for patients living with such chronic conditions as HIV, cancer, multiple sclerosis and autoimmune diseases, as well as for people recovering from organ transplants, said company spokesman Paul Simon. “It’s for patients who require special attention and hard-to-source medication,” he added.


Chain pharmacies and independent pharmacies each have their advantages and disadvantages. Chains generally follow a top-down business model that requires all stores to be roughly identical in terms of their look and services, but they can offer those services to customers around the country. Independents’ services usually are limited to one or a handful of locations in a single geographic area, but they have more freedom in terms of their mix of products and services.


Many analysts have voiced concern that despite numerous indications of a slow, but healthy, economic recovery in the United States, growth in the number of jobs has lagged, even as it has exceeded economists’ expectations.


But another indicator that the economy is picking up speed is U.S. sales growth at Costco Wholesale, the members-only mass merchandiser based in Issaquah, Wash. For fiscal 2010, sales at the company’s 424 U.S. stores — which the company officially calls warehouses — were $59.6 billion, compared with $56.5 billion in 2009.