Exterior view of a typical Walgreens store.
Walgreens NYSE: WAG 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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