Walgreens And FedEx Partner On Pickup

Walgreens just announced a new, long-term alliance with FedEx that will bring pick up and drop off services to thousands of store locations across the U.S. by fall 2018, starting in the next few months.

Customers will be able to drop off prepackaged and prelabeled shipments at Walgreens stores and pick up packages that they direct to their neighborhood Walgreens. FedEx and Walgreens are planning an initial small-scale rollout in the spring of this year.

“Walgreens, with its strong focus on customer care, is the perfect retailer to help us continue to meet the growing demand for convenient, secure drop-off and pickup options, and our research has shown that customers rank pharmacies as a preferred location for accessing their eCommerce shipments,” said Raj Subramaniam, executive vice president, chief marketing and communications officer at FedEx. “The addition of Walgreens locations to the existing network of FedEx retail offerings will substantially increase customer access to staffed pickup and drop-off locations and enhance convenient access to FedEx Ground and FedEx Express package shipment and drop-off options.”

The new partners expect that the program will be available at thousands of Walgreens locations later by the end of 2017. The service will be chainwide, available at the nearly 8,000 Walgreens stores, by fall 2018.

“Working with FedEx to provide safe and secure delivery locations while making it easy for customers to ship returns and other packages through the FedEx networks is another way we are becoming America’s most loved pharmacy-led health, well-being and beauty retailer,” said Reuben Slone, Walgreens senior vice president of supply chain. “We look forward to providing our customers with these convenient options that will be available whenever the store is open.”

This new alliance with FedEx doesn’t seem to extend into the ongoing Walgreens/RiteAid merger, which is on track to create the largest drugstore operation in the U.S. with 46 percent market share. The deal will leave the two brands with a proposed combination of a little under 12,000 stores — a majority of which will now also offer FedEx pick up and drop off within the next year-and-a-half.