Walgreens

Walgreens is a national pharmacy and convenience retailer that anchors daily-needs shopping in many U.S. communities. As of November 2024, the company operates nearly 8,000 Walgreens-branded stores across the United States and Puerto Rico, offering prescription services alongside over-the-counter medications, health and wellness products, basic groceries, personal care, beauty, and household essentials. Stores serve a high-frequency customer base and typically pair pharmacy traffic with quick-trip convenience, supported by online ordering, delivery, and pickup options through the Walgreens website and app.

The company is a core business of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., a global healthcare, pharmacy, and retail group headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. Within that structure, Walgreens represents the primary U.S. retail pharmacy platform, giving it significant scale, purchasing power, and brand visibility. This scale helps support long-term occupancy, national credit tenancy, and a broad mix of urban, suburban, and small-town locations.

Walgreens traces its origins to a single Chicago drugstore opened by Charles R. Walgreen Sr. in 1901. From that one corner store, the brand expanded across Chicago, then the Midwest, and eventually across the country, becoming a familiar presence in neighborhood and community shopping areas. A defining milestone came in 2014, when Walgreens combined with Alliance Boots to create Walgreens Boots Alliance. That transaction linked a large U.S. retail footprint with a substantial European and international pharmacy portfolio and marked Walgreens’ evolution from a domestic drugstore chain into part of a global healthcare and retail organization.

In the last five years, Walgreens has shifted from a heavy new-store buildout to a portfolio optimization and healthcare-integration strategy. The company completed the acquisition and rebranding of roughly 1,932 Rite Aid locations, which expanded its network and then led to a period of pruning overlapping or underperforming stores. At the same time, Walgreens has invested in remodeling existing units, updating layouts, and piloting more healthcare-forward concepts. Many locations now incorporate expanded pharmacy services, immunizations, clinic-based care, or partnerships with primary care and other health providers, supported by digital tools that let patients manage prescriptions and health visits online.

For landlords, brokers, and developers, Walgreens remains a prominent national tenant with a wide range of formats, including freestanding buildings on visible corners, outparcels to grocery and power centers, and inline or streetfront space in dense urban corridors. The chain continues to look for strong trade areas with reliable prescription demand, high everyday traffic, and access to commuter or neighborhood patterns that support frequent pharmacy and convenience trips. While new unit growth is more selective than in past decades, the company is still active in securing high-quality, strategic sites and in repositioning existing locations to better reflect changing consumer and patient needs.

As of November 2024, Walgreens is directing more capital toward store upgrades, in-store and co-located healthcare services, and omnichannel capabilities than toward aggressive net-new store counts. This approach keeps its large base of leased and owned real estate relevant, sustaining store traffic and reinforcing its role as a repeat-visit anchor in established urban and suburban trade areas.