Due to financial challenges, Walgreens said on Thursday that it would close two Oakland shops and one in Richmond. This raises the total number of Bay Area Walgreens closures to over two dozen in only the last few years.
Walgreens and the Bay Area have been at odds since 2019, as the company’s retail pharmacy network has closed an increasing number of sites. Walgreens closed 17 sites between 2019 and the beginning of 2021.
Employees at the locations indicated that increased crime and theft were the primary causes, with excuses ranging from performance issues to economic concerns.
Walgreens later admitted that the closures were caused by persistent retail crime when five more closed in October 2021.
Despite Walgreens’ own claim that the closures were due to crime, San Francisco officials, including Mayor London Breed, continued to dispute this.
In 2023, Walgreens saw a handful of more unpleasant, widely reported incidents in the region.
Governor Gavin Newsom said in March of last year that the state would no longer do business with Walgreens after attorney generals from those states threatened legal action over the abortion pill.
Up until the state Department of Health Care Services discovered that Newsom’s actions were illegal under federal law the next month, Newsom began terminating state contracts. Despite the policy changes, the state and the firm continued to have a strained relationship.
The shooting of a criminal shoplifter by a security guard at a Walgreens in San Francisco that month drew international attention.
Protests against the corporation in the Bay Area harmed the region’s ties to the shop even further. San Francisco and California even supported Walgreens earlier this year by not charging the security guard with any offenses, but that alone did not make things right.
The East Bay Has Three Closures
As a result, it was announced on Friday that three outlets in Oakland and Richmond will be closing as part of a bigger statewide retail closure.
Two stores in Sacramento also shuttered, demonstrating that the Bay Area was not the only region impacted by closures, but it did contain some of the chain’s most vulnerable sites.
Officially, the three Oakland locations were among the lower-performing stores set to close to boost earnings and cut operating costs.
Additional remarks focused on the economic concerns, and Walgreens provided the following explanation in a statement on Friday:
“Our retail pharmacy business is central to our go-forward business strategy. However, increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures are weighing on our ability to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing, and supply needs.
“It is never an easy decision to close a store. 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 in the Bay Area, we will work in partnership with community stakeholders to minimize customer disruptions.”
However, the recent closures in the Bay Area did not surprise anyone.
When the stores officially close next month, Oakland will have only six Walgreens remaining, while Richmond, a city of over 100,000 people, will have none. It is anticipated that further shutdown sites will be revealed soon.