Public seems intrigued by new sushi-serving Walgreens store

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Updated: February 11, 2012 8:21AM

Istood outside with the riff-raff Monday evening as the important people on the invitation-only list were ushered inside for the private grand opening party.

The wine was flowing, and waitresses brought around plates of fresh-made sushi for the well-heeled crowd while waiting for speeches by the mayor and governor.

“It looks like a stock market in there,” said a young African-American male with a backpack hurrying past on the sidewalk.

That sort of scene plays out every day in Chicago, although there is considerable doubt as to whether it had ever happened at a Walgreens.

Yet this new Walgreens at State and Randolph, we are told, is a Walgreens like no other, and there’s no arguing the point.

With a sushi bar, an eyebrow-shaping service and bottles of wine selling for as much as $450, this is not the pharmacy where your great-grandmother shopped, even if it does occupy the same corner. In fact, the pharmacy itself is almost an afterthought, located upstairs on the second floor.

The ground floor beckons customers instead with Up Market. Get it? The fresh food emporium, allegedly geared to tourists and downtown office workers, is so upscale that it prefers the Euro synonym.

Yes, your friendly neighborhood Walgreens is putting on airs. I really wasn’t sure what to make of it when our Sandra Guy put the story online Monday, so I wandered over to see what other people thought.

As darkness fell, I put my questions to anyone who paused to stare through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the partygoers in their business attire. Many had a question in return for me: What’s this all about?

Most were dumbstruck when I told them about the new store, especially the sushi, although not necessarily in a negative way. Many said they will eagerly return Tuesday when the store opens to the public.

While the concept strikes me as foolish, I’m sympathetic to the need for businesses to keep reinventing themselves, and I like Chicago companies to be successful. After all, Charles Walgreen got his start right here in Chicago, didn’t he?

As it happened, the first person I stopped, Jeanne Kuhn of Dixon, Ill., wanted to disabuse me of that notion, telling me Charles Walgreen got his start in her town. (This is partly true, according to the official Walgreens history. While going to high school in Dixon, Walgreen worked part-time at the local Horton’s Drugstore, where (shades of Rahm Emanuel) he cut off the top joint of his middle finger on the job. They don’t explain how. Years later he would open his first pharmacy on the South Side.)

Sorry, I digress. Back to our story.

“You’re kidding,” Kuhn said, when I told her about the sushi bar. Like many of those to whom I spoke, Kuhn said she won’t be eating Walgreens sushi. But only because she doesn’t like sushi. On the other hand, she and her friend Diane Kalas liked the idea of the computer-simulated makeup machine that will take your photo to show what you’ll look like in that new eyeshadow.

“This is crazy,” said Peter Agudelo, another out-of-town visitor. “I’m from Miami, and Walgreens there looks nothing like this. It’s a bit much for a Walgreens.”

His friend, Carrie Barroll, didn’t understand the attraction of simulated makeup.

“I just try it on,” she said.

But Ruth Clark of South Shore, who works across the street at Macy’s, was ecstatic to have her Walgreens back.

“I used to go to this Walgreens all the time,” Clark said, and when I told her about the new features, she was even happier. “Oh, my goodness. This is neat. Wow!”

Some Spanish tourists trying to get their arms around the concept informed me sushi bars are the latest gimmick in Europe, too.

“Three years ago in Europe it was Chinese food, now it’s sushi,” said Mercedes Bonafonte of Barcelona.

But she and her compatriots said they were attracted by the promise of healthy food and would have gone inside if allowed.

Meagan Burns, a marketing manager for a restaurant group who was trying to crash the party, assured me this could be the start of something big: “a whole new level of consumer experience,” she said.

God bless, as long as they can still fill a prescription.