Walgreens Flagship Store: It’s Not Your Grandmother’s Pharmacy

Brought to you in collaboration with Walgreens and Collective Bias™

I have been a regular Walgreens customer since I moved to San Francisco in 1992. It’s convenient, there are many locations, and I can find all sorts of useful things that I need there. Up until now, I’ve always thought of Walgreens as a drugstore where I buy cosmetics, toiletries and fill prescriptions. It’s a useful kind of place, but I wouldn’t have described the shopping experience as anything extraordinary. Then I got invited to the grand opening of the San Francisco Walgreens Flagship store and I could not believe my eyes. This is not your grandmother’s pharmacy. Walgreens has stepped it up like 10,000 notches.

You walk into the 2-level remodeled store and right away on the ground level there is no mistaking that you are in San Francisco.

There’s an homage to the Golden Gate Bridge and plenty of souvenirs for tourists to pick up.

Cool, but what really stunned me as a long time customer of this particular location was the food that is now available.

Like I said, I go to Walgeens for cosmetics, toiletries, and prescriptions. I have never been to Walgreens to pick up a meal, a snack perhaps, but not a meal. Well, they have meals now and there are healthy options to choose from.

 

Honestly, it’s like a full on deli-style café in there. You can get salads, sandwiches, pastries, coffee, tea, frozen yogurt, and on and on.

As impressed as I was by the comestibles, my favorite part of the store is still the cosmetics section and now they have a whole new area called the LOOKboutique, which makes you feel like you are in a high-end boutique.

Check out this display of nail colors. Have you ever seen anything like this at a Walgreens?

And you could spend hours sampling all of the DEMETER fragrances. It’s all very hands on and user friendly.

They offer Boots No7 products and there is knowledgeable staff on hand to advise you on product selection and even offer application advise.

Just so you know, the San Francisco Flagship store has a brow bar where you can get your brows done!

Not to worry that the introduction of new lines of products means that anything you have come to expect from the Walgreens cosmetic aisles is missing. It’s all still there and playing nicely with the new additions.

As for the pharmacy part of this drugstore, it’s going strong and they’ve added a private consultation room because sometimes you want to take care of your business in private. Am I right?

I was genuinely impressed by all the upgrades and attention to detail that went into the opening of the San Francisco Walgreens Flagship store. I’d love to see some of these changes implemented across the drugstore chain. I realize that all the stores can’t be this posh, but now that I know that the possibility exists, I want to take advantage of the flagship experience whenever I can.

Feel free to check out the rest of the pictures I took during the grand opening celebration via my Walgreens SF Flagship Store google+ album.

Connect with Walgreens:

Facebook
Twitter
Google+

I was invited to the opening of the Walgreens store by Collective Bias®.  I was compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias ™ and Walgreens #CBias #SocialFabric  All Opinions are my own.