Admittedly, drug stores are not shopped for orange juice. More likely, if you forgot OJ at the supermarket and just happen to pick up a prescription at the drug store, juice can be a convenient purchase.
In recent months, Walgreens has rather quietly put out its own label orange juice in refrigerated cases at its stores around the country–a less pricey brand than the nationally advertised labels like Tropicana.
“It’s (the Walgreen brand) flying off the shelves,” says a manager at one of Walgreens North Michigan Avenue stores.
A spokesman for Deerfield-based Walgreens says, “Our Walgreen brand has done very well.”
A Walgreens OJ is no threat to other, more productive profit centers, including greeting cards, at its stores.
But as any shopper knows, drug stores aren’t drug stores anymore with general merchandise (28 percent) and cosmetics and toiletries (8 percent), accounting for more than a third of total sales at the average Walgreens. Prescription drugs represent 52 percent, over-the-counter drugs another 12 percent.
Until the introduction of orange juice, Walgreens had been selling its own cranberry and apple juices for the past three years, and Tropicana for 15 years.
Rival Osco has been selling an OJ brand under the name of Jewel, a sister company, since 1996. More than 60 percent of Osco’s Chicago-area stores have a Food Mart, which carries the Jewel OJ brand.
Whether it’s Walgreens, Osco, Jewel, Dominick’s or any other highly trafficked retail outlet, top dollar is involved in OJ purchases.
Refrigerated orange juice was tracked as a $2.8 billion business for a recent 52-week period by Information Resources Inc., based on purchases in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers.
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Nationwide, Tropicana, a PepsiCo unit, sells 41 percent of that market; Coca-Cola Co.’s Minute Maid another 20 percent; Florida’s Natural, 9 percent; and private label or “house brands,” 20 percent.
Eyeing Frankel: A bidding process to acquire Chicago-based marketing services firm Frankel & Co. has been narrowed to Omnicom Group, parent of ad agencies BBDO, DDB and TBWA and other communications units; WPP Group, whose properties include Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson Co.; and France’s Publicis S.A., sources say. Omnicom’s DDB unit is principal agency for McDonald’s Corp. in the U.S. Frankel’s biggest client is McDonald’s. Frankel retained Goldman, Sachs & Co. New York to explore the possibility of a sale.
– Separately, Publicis is negotiating an acquisition of Chicago-based PR firm Selz, Seabolt Communications, sources also report. A Selz, Seabolt official declined comment, but sources indicate this is a done deal. Publicis has been building up its PR operation in the U.S., including a recent acquisition of LobsenzStevens, a New York PR firm.
On the move: Susan Petrus was promoted to VP of sales and marketing for health care for Moore North America, Lake Forest . . . Barbara Molotsky, president of BSMG Chicago, also became a vice chairman of the parent BSMG Worldwide, continuing to head its Chicago and Dallas offices, while taking on new responsibilities, including overseeing the Boston office and building the marketing communications-PR firm’s presence in the Southeast, where there is a Tallahassee, Fla. office. Ted Pincus, the Chicago-based CEO of Financial Relations Board, also has been a vice chairman of BSMG Worldwide, a unit of True North Communications . . . Jose Vivar, recently a senior manager at BDO Seidman, assumes the same post at Altschuler, Melvoin & Glasser on Monday.
– Birthday greetings to Julia Lande, 36; John Bowlin, 49 (Miller Brewing); D.J. Romano, 71; Kris Doody, 34 (Cramer-Krasselt); Jeannie Medrea, 43 (Kelly Services); and consultant Thomas L. Blair, 62.
– Information technology services firm Whittman-Hart Inc. in May picked McConnaughy Stein Schmidt Brown for communications programs, including advertising. Now,
Whittman-Hart has gone out and acquired Four Points Digital, an interactive marketing agency that grew from a start-up by three former Foote, Cone & Belding Chicago staffers 30 months ago to 80 employees currently.