Walgreens
Walgreens is a convenience store and pharmacy chain in the United
States that operates approximately 5,000 stores throughout the fifty
United States and a U.S. insular area, Puerto Rico. It was founded
in Chicago, Illinois in 1901. It has since expanded throughout the
United States. Its headquarters is now located in Deerfield, Illinois,
a suburb of Chicago. CVS/pharmacy is one of its primary competitors.
This chain started out as a drug store with a fanatically
customer-oriented owner, Charles R. Walgreen, Sr., whose theories
of low prices and good service allowed the company to spread and
set what are considered some of the first modern chain store standards.
When still a single store, Walgreen prided himself in having drug
prescriptions delivered to customers before they were off the phone
from calling the order in.
Walgreens pioneered the industry as the first to use
child-safe prescription lids. Walgreens was the first drugstore
to have a drive through pharmacy. They were the first pharmacy to
have all their stores linked by satellite. And they are currently
the second largest users of satellites behind the US government.
It also is reputed to have helped spread the banana
split, which it adopted as its signature dish (drug stores often
having, at that time, a soda counter), and even takes credit for
inventing, through Ivar "Pop" Coulson in 1922, the malted
milkshake. Walgreens also used to feature hot food, unusual among
drug stores. They ran their own food chain named Wag's which was
based on resturaunts that were in some of the larger Walgreens stores.
Wag's was sold off to Mariott in the eighties so Walgreens could
focus on their primary pharmacy/convienence store business.
In August 2005, Walgreens pulled a controversial book
by Kevin Trudeau from its shelves
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