Walgreen plans to offer fresh, prepared food

Walgreen Co. plans to offer fresh foods, including salads and cut fruit, and prepared meals to draw "time-starved" shoppers to its more than 7,000 stores.

The drugstore chain has been talking with foodmakers including Unilever NV, Nestle SA, Sara Lee Corp. about creating private-label and branded products for "tonight's meal," said Bryan Pugh, vice president of merchandising.

"Everyone is time-starved and we have the most convenient 7,000 locations in the U.S.," Pugh said in a Jan. 11 telephone interview. "They're on-the-way-home destinations that are easy to get in and out of and will provide a good value." He declined to say when the project will be implemented and how much it costs.

Walgreen, based in Deerfield, Illinois, must sort out supply and distribution issues and test in some markets before introducing "tonight's meal" throughout the chain, he said.

The goal of the program, along with the sale of beer and private-label wine, is to boost revenue, Pugh said. Same-store sales declined in November and December as 10 percent unemployment and falling home values blunted consumer spending.

"If they can get consumer acceptance, this would be good for sales," said Andrew Wolf, a Richmond, Virginia-based analyst with BB&T Capital Markets, which recommends that investors buy the shares. "Consumers aren't used to buying salads from a drugstore chain. That would have to change."

Fresh Foods DirectorWalgreen hired a director of fresh foods, who will begin work in several weeks, Pugh said. He wouldn't name the person."We won't get our customer every day on the way home, but if we could get 50 percent of our customers one day a week on the way home, that would do wonders for our sales," he said.Pugh, 47, previously worked for Tesco Plc, the U.K.'s largest retailer, and helped design Tesco USA's Fresh Easy Neighborhood markets, which offered freshly prepared meals."Fresh Easy conceptually was a home run, but it hasn't worked out in the field," BBT's Wolf said. "The stores lacked ambiance and were in low-rent, C locations. Walgreen's has A locations. They really do have the best locations in the U.S."Walgreen is selling private-label wines at about 1,500 locations. It sold more than 200,000 bottles, at $2.99 a bottle, since the line, which includes chardonnay, cabernet, zinfandel and merlot, was introduced in December under the Southern Point name, Pugh said. A $5.99 private label will be offered in April, he said.Finding Floor SpaceStores carrying beer and wine have higher average sales per person, he said. That purchase alone pushes up sales in a shopper's grocery cart as much as 60 percent, he said."Beer and wine are proven winners for drugstores, but not proven fixers," Wolf said. "What's for dinner will be much trickier to pull off." The challenge is attracting enough customers to keep the fresh food turning over and finding space for the new products in already crowded venues, he said.Walgreen fell 52 cents to $36.59 at 11:27 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares rose 49 percent last year.