In an era when community pharmacy faces intense financial pressure, Anthony DalPonte has succeeded in putting health care at Albertsons on a path to sustained growth and profitability. The process began in earnest when DalPonte, who has led that part of the business since August 2022, and the Albertsons leadership team examined just what pharmacy customers meant to the grocer.
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores continues to draw strength from a stable, experienced board that reflects the full breadth of pharmacy retail. That continuity played a key role in advancing recent PBM reform, with Walgreens chairman Rick Gates building on the groundwork laid by Kevin Host and Mike Wysong. As Dave Warner prepares to assume the chairmanship, he is expected to sustain that momentum with the support of a board that continues to evolve, including the addition of Anthony DalPonte.
Jeffrey Woldt
“As we dug in, we crafted a really good story,” DalPonte said. “These customers are visiting our stores four times as often, they’re building bigger baskets, they’re more loyal, they churn less frequently, and they engage in omnichannel solutions much more often. Their CLV [customer lifetime value] is three, four, five times as high as a traditional customer.”
That insight — coupled with a surge in demand for service in the wake of the care that Albertsons provided during the COVID pandemic — triggered a quest to convert pharmacy growth to the bottom line. Every aspect of the operation was rethought.
“We launched three central fill facilities, adjusted our labor model to allow pharmacists to focus on the customer, and started to get creative on our procurement strategies and, all of a sudden, profitability started turning around,” explained DalPonte. “We rebuilt the structure from ground up to start stacking wins in this business.
“Before the pandemic, 70% of our customers didn’t realize we had pharmacies, now 80% of them know we do. Administering vaccines played a big part in that change — today Albertsons has the highest immunization per door rate in the industry — but education, awareness and exposure were also important. That said, service was the biggest differentiator behind our growth.”
An important aspect of DalPonte’s job is to communicate his vision of health care to the more than 20,000 Albertsons’ employees responsible for making that vision a reality.
“We define our culture by making our purpose very clear,” said DalPonte, whose responsibilities were recently expanded to include over-the-counter medications. “What I tell the pharmacists in the store is that my job is to make your job — taking care of the customer — doable. That’s it. If I can’t institute technology and models and other things to make that your only mission, then I’m not doing what I should. I want their focus to be solely on the customer.”
Looking to the future, DalPonte, who joined the NACDS board of directors a year ago, sees the day when pharmacists are recognized as providers, allowing them to function more like nurse practitioners or physician assistants. Provider status would increase convenience for patients, ease the burden on doctors and help contain costs.
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