Cafecito, bilingual staff, money transfer services, an expanded discount fragrance counter. But wait -- “y más.”
CVS has launched 12 “CVS/pharmacy y más” stores in South Florida. In Miami, Hialeah, Doral, Homestead and Kendall, CVS says it has converted 11 existing locations and added a brand-new store to launch its Hispanic-centric store concept.
This comes less than a year after the Rhode Island-based giant bought Miami-based Navarro Discount Pharmacy, touted as the largest Hispanic-owned drugstore chain in the country.
“CVS absolutely respects that [Navarro] is a well recognized name in South Florida and a very successful brand,” says Gabriel Navarro. The former Navarro CEO is now CVS’ chief of Hispanic consumer growth. “So absolutely the focus here is to learn from Navarro to better serve the Hispanic consumers throughout the U.S.”
Navarro says the “y más” stores are not meant to replace existing Navarro Discount Pharmacy locations in South Florida.
In a press release, CVS says the new stores will carry “more than 1,500 trusted Hispanic products including favorite brands such as Café La Llave, Agustin Reyes, Fabuloso, Suavitel, Creolina and Formula 88.”
“You walk into many national retailers today who are making an effort to service the Hispanic consumer and they might have a 4-foot Hispanic health and beauty set or a 4-foot Hispanic grocery set,” says Gabriel Navarro. “We’ve exerted a lot of effort to integrate 1,500 items through the stores.”
The stores will also house a digital services center that, according to the CVS release, will feature “an authorized dealer and payment center for metroPCS, bill payments services for utilities, phone and cable, and money transfer services to a wide variety of countries.”
Gabriel Navarro told WLRN that CVS hopes to expand the concept nationally but, at the moment, there’s no timeline for doing so.
Below, a map of “CVS/pharmacy y más” locations.
