Chino CA chain drugstore update

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luckysaver
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Chino CA chain drugstore update

Post by luckysaver »

I'm currently doing some research on the history of the Chino Valley. From the chain drugstore perspective, here is an update of the various chain drugstores/pharmacies located within the City of Chino that are currently known:

12160 Central (at Philadelphia)
Now vacant, was Savon Drugs - this older building is similar to the Savon/CVS on Azusa Ave/San Bernardino Road in Covina. If it was a 1980's Savon, it probably was a shortlived Osco Drug, or if beyond, a Skagg. Sometime before the acquisition by CVS, they moved across the street to a corner standalone store, currently operating as CVS Pharmacy.

12059 Central (at Philadelphia, next door to Albertsons)
First opened as Thrifty Drugs and became Rite Aid 5579in the late 1990's after Rite Aid acquired Thrifty Payless Inc. Albertsons does not have an instore pharmacy because of the drugstore next door. Chino never had a Payless Drug store.

12490 Central (at Walnut)
Walgreens 6438. Like most new Walgreens store in the LA area, this one was built from the ground up together with the adjacent Starbucks. This shopping center, called Central Plaza was built in stages. The oldest section anchored by Central Furniture dates to the 1950's (2 buildings) and sometime later, Pacific Western Bank was added and more recently, Starbucks and Walgreens.

12155 Central (at Philadelphia)
Previously Drug Emporium. Somewhere on the web, the address matches a "Gigantic Supermercado" general merchandise store.

Chain cooperative pharmacies/drugstores:
There are four large drugstore/pharmacy cooperatives in the nation - Good Neighbor Pharmacy, Medicine Shoppe, United Drugs, and Leader Drugs. These shops are not owned by these brands - they are independently owned and operated but are members of these brands to promote products and services.

United Drug - 12611 9th Street/D St (dba Chino Professional Pharmacy and Chino Medical Plaza Pharmacy)

Medicine Shoppe - 12447 Central/Philadelphia (in the same shopping center as Superior)
dba Medicine Shoppe.

There are no GNP and Leader member stores in Chino. Thornton's Pharmacy on Riverside Dr east of Central closed sometime ago and was a GNP branch (been around since the 1960's).

Rancho Cucamonga-based Gemmel Pharmacy (with multiple locations in Rancho, Upland, and Ontario) had a shop on Central Ave going back to the 1960's. It has since been closed and they have no Chino locations.

IN-STORE PHARMACIES

Ralphs operates an in-store pharmacy on 12835 Mountain/Riverside.

Walmart/Sams Club and both Target stores have in-store pharmacies as well. The Targets added pharmacies about 2 years ago.

When Vons operated Pak n Save (now Superior Superwarehouse), there was a Vons-branded pharmacy but using Safeway branded stationary such as bottle labels and customer comment cards.

The Stater Bros that is scheduled to open sometime next year on Schaefer and Euclid might have a SuperRx in-store pharmacy. SuperRx was a pharmacist-owned chain of pharmacies located inside selected Stater Bros stores and was bought out by Staters as a subsidiary in 2006.

As with other legacy chain banners (such as American Drug Stores <dba Clark Drugs/Katz Drugs/Skaggs Drug Center/Health n Home> and Alpha Beta's Hy-Lo Drugs), none of these locations were found in the Times archives.

luckysaver
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Re: Chino CA chain drugstore update

Post by luckysaver »

Last week, I visited the smallest CVS Pharmacy that I've ever been inside. That same week, I also visited the largest CVS Pharmacy that I've ever been inside (Diamond Bar Blvd at 60 Freeway)

The location is just north of the Chino city limits on the corner of Euclid Ave (State Route 83) and Philadelphia St (adjacent to the Food4Less that resembles a former Market Basket, but I'm not sure). The way the stores are positioned side-by-side, CVS is a dinghy.

According to the shift supervisor that I spoke to, he said it was it was former Savon Express.

From what I know from reading about Savon stores on the old ASC web pages back in the late 1990's, Savon Express stores did not have an in-store pharmacy or other departments that larger stores had. When Savon stores became CVS, the stores were remodeled and I guess the stores that did not have pharmacies had one installed such as the former Express stores.

Inside this location in South Ontario/Chino, aisles are narrowed and cramped (not a need to use a shopping cart) and tucked away in the back wall is a small pharmacy, about 500-600 square feet (most are about 800). Due to its size, it did not carry as much product as with the larger CVS stores.

It reminds me of 2 things -

- CVS general merchandise stores located inside malls (I bought a Big Bird keychain from the old format CVS store many years ago at the Westfield West Covina mall).
- Thrifty Junior stores in the LA area, now small-format/limited assortment Rite Aid stores
(see the very bottom of the back page of the RA ad in the fine print under the liquor for all of
the junior RA's.

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runchadrun
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Re: Chino CA chain drugstore update

Post by runchadrun »

There would have been a pharmacy inside Gemco, now Superior.

I believe it's been posted previously that the Drug Emporium was a former Market Basket but was torn down to build Gigante.

The nearest Clark Drugs store to Chino was in Ontario on Grove at the 60.

I think there were two versions of the old CVS/Savon Express stores: the general merchandise stores (there was also one in the Central City Mall in San Bernardino) and the small-size drug stores with pharmacies. ASC bought them from CVS in 1992 and rebranded them as Savon Express but when CVS bought Savon they dropped the Express label. Towards the end of the Albertsons ownership, at least one Savon Express (in Mission Hills) relocated to a standalone, full-size store so I don't know if they were trying to get rid of the small stores. There's still a tiny one in Northridge at Balboa and Nordhoff that can't be more than 3000 sqft.
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Re: Chino CA chain drugstore update

Post by Jeff »

You want to see a Gigantic Sav-on/CVS....you must stop by the store in Arcadia that used to be a former Super S store on Baldwin. They recently remodeled it and actually took out some of the sq footage of the store, but you feel like you can stick 4 regular sized CVS stand alone stores in that space.
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