Walgreens will permanently shut the doors of 12 of its San Francisco locations.
Residents of the Golden City will see the 12 stores that Walgreens has chosen to shutter stop serving consumers in late February, the pharmacy store chain confirmed Monday.
The addresses of the impacted San Francisco stores include 1201 Taraval Street, 3201 Divisadero Street, 1363 Divisadero Street, 825 Market Street, 1750 Noriega Street, 5280 Geary Boulevard, 1524 Polk Street, 1301 Franklin Street, 1189 Potrero Avenue, 135 Powell Street, 1630 Ocean Avenue and 5300 3rd Street, according to Walgreens.
The upcoming closures were earlier reported by CBS News Bay Area and other local media outlets.
“It is never an easy decision to close a store,” Walgreens told FOX Business in a statement. “We know that our stores are important to the communities that we serve, and therefore do everything possible to improve the store performance. When closures are necessary, like those here in San Francisco, we will work in partnership with community stakeholders to minimize customer disruptions.”
The move to shutter the 12 locations was linked to “increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures” that the pharmacy store chain said were “weighing on our ability to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing, and supply needs.”
It also said its retail pharmacy business “is central to our go-forward business strategy.”
Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth said in October that the company would be “focusing on stabilizing the retail pharmacy by optimizing our footprint, controlling operating costs, improving cash flow, and continuing to address reimbursement models to support dispensing margins and preserve patient access for the future” in fiscal 2025.
The pharmacy store chain said at the time that the effort to optimize its footprint would involve about 1,200 stores facing closure over a three-year period.
WALGREENS TO CLOSE 1,200 STORES AS PART OF TURNAROUND EFFORT
Walgreens told FOX Business on Monday that the closure of the 12 San Francisco stores was part of that initiative.
While discussing the company’s first-quarter earnings late last week, Wentworth told analysts and investors that Walgreens had “begun our footprint optimization program and are pleased with the early results.”
“We’re currently exceeding historical script retention rates and have retained the majority of store and pharmacy team members,” he also said. “We expect to significantly ramp up the pace of our store closures from the first quarter level.”
The company has said its store closure target for fiscal 2025 was 500 locations.
Wentworth said Walgreens “expect[s] our future footprint to support stronger performance.”
Walgreens reported operating about 8,500 retail pharmacy locations in the U.S. at the end of November.
