Wakefern to open centralized pharmacy fulfillment center
Wakefern Food Corp. is partnering to streamline prescription dispensing, giving pharmacists at its member stores more time to spend with customers.
The retailer-owned supermarket cooperative plans to open to open a 12,000-sq.-ft. centralized pharmacy fulfillment center in partnership with pharmacy fulfillment solutions provider iA. The facility will streamline prescription dispensing and back-end pharmacy operations to allow for even more personalized patient care in the pharmacies at 149 ShopRite locations and two The Fresh Grocer stores in the Northeast.
Expected to open early next year, the fill center will operate at a Wakefern facility and help free up store pharmacists to spend more time consulting with patients, answering questions and connecting them with nutrition resources to support their wellness goals. The technology will also work in tandem with ShopRite’s digital tools, including the ShopRite Rx app, which helps customers manage prescriptions, request refills and stay connected to their local pharmacy.
“Our ShopRite Pharmacies sit at a unique intersection of medicine and food — two essential drivers of everyday health,” said Aaron Sapp, VP of pharmacy and wellness at Wakefern. “This centralized fulfillment system will help better coordinate our behind-the-scenes pharmacy operations, allowing our pharmacy teams to focus on delivering more personalized care to the customers we serve in stores every day.”
The initiative comes retail pharmacies continue to face industry pressures, including reimbursement challenges, rising prescription volumes and increasing operational complexity. Enhanced centralized fulfillment models are being adopted to enable more scalable and efficient prescription dispensing, while allowing pharmacy teams to focus more on patient-facing care. New team members will be hired to operate the Wakefern centralized pharmacy fulfillment system, which will fill thousands of prescriptions each day and support more efficient backend pharmacy operations.
“This approach combines intelligent software and data-driven insights to enhance consistency, improve efficiency and give pharmacy teams more time to focus on what matters most — caring for their patients.” said Tom Utech, CEO, iA.
Wakefern is the largest retailer-owned supermarket cooperative in the United States, encompassing member companies that independently own and operate nearly 380 supermarkets under the ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer, Dearborn Market, Gourmet Garage, Fairway Market, Di Bruno Bros. and Morton Williams banners. Wakefern Members currently operate an in-store network of 151 pharmacies.
