Sigmund Freud once wrote, apocryphally, that sometimes, a drug store is just a drug store. But what happens when the drug store company decides to scale its store model much larger and give it “lifestyle brand” accents?
Well, it’s still a drug store. Walgreens is opening a “flagship” location tomorrow at the corner of Seventh and H streets NW in Chinatown, and today the company offered previews of the new store. For the most part, it’s just a bigger version of an ordinary Walgreens, though right now it’s very shiny and clean. (It is, however, not yet officially open to customers.)
Among the differences at this 21,400-square-foot store are an entire floor devoted to cosmetics, which is split between the bargain brands one would find at a shoddy, ordinary Walgreens and the high-end stuff like makeup lines made by the British cosmetic company Boots UK (in which Walgreens holds a 45 percent stake). But, according to Mark Wagner, Walgreens’ president of operations and community management, D.C’s fancy Walgreens isn’t as segregated as the “flagship” stores in other cities. “This gondola is much higher,” he says, pointing to the shelf partitioning the expensive and cheap areas of the beauty offerings.
The main floor is built around displays of prepared food—sandwiches, baked goods, self-serve frozen yogurt, a juice and smoothie bar, and yes, sushi. The pharmacy, expanded to include a consultation room where Walgreens’ target customers—in Wagner’s description, sexagenarians who need to fill 15 or 16 prescriptions—can talk about their pill habits with the store’s pharmacist.
For the most part, though, it’s a Walgreens store, there’s just more of it. More beverages in the refrigeration units, more brands of vitamins and pain relievers in the over-the-counter pharmacy aisles, and even more prophylactic options.