Customers can pick up online grocery orders at Walgreens/Kroger Express stores
More recently, I was able to visit a Walgreens/Kroger Express store, one of several locations in northern Kentucky that are part of a pilot partnership between the drug chain and the nation’s largest traditional grocer, whose corporate headquarters is in nearby Cincinnati.
The partnership, announced late last year, is a store-within-a-store concept that features fresh produce, meat, dairy, frozen foods, Home Chef meal kits, wine and other grocery items, many of them Kroger-branded, prominently positioned within the drug store. Each location also features Kroger Pickup for online grocery orders placed through Kroger’s website, with orders filled from larger supermarkets in the area or a fulfillment center.
The concept provides a new level of convenience for regular shoppers of both Kroger and Walgreens. It also exposes Walgreens shoppers to Kroger-branded products and Kroger shoppers to Walgreens brands, including its Nice! brand nuts, which are sold in the snack aisle of the Kroger Express section. According to Kroger, the arrangement has so far not cannibalized sales from nearby traditional Kroger markets.
It’s still too early in the going to declare the partnership a success, and Kroger’s not ready to say whether consumers will see similar arrangements with its other banners – say, Walgreens/Ralphs Express or Walgreens/King Soopers Express.
But it speaks to Kroger’s emergence as a think tank of innovative ideas for removing friction and increasing access to food, making it easier for people to get what they want, where they want it, how they want it.