Retail Roundup: Hispanic-focused CVS opens in Central Islip
CVS Pharmacy is introducing its Hispanic-focused format to New Jersey and New York with 12 stores, including one on Long Island – in Central Islip, at 2 E. Suffolk Ave.
Called CVS Pharmacy y más, the stores have bilingual staff, signs in Spanish, and “more than 1,500 products from trusted Hispanic brands, such as Iberia Foods, Yaucono, Fabuloso, Tio Nacho, Pilon and Café La Llave,” according to CVS Pharmacy, the retail division of CVS Health.
The stores also have lower prices on some everyday items, the company said.
“When deciding where to establish or expand CVS Pharmacy y más presence, CVS looks at the areas where there are large and concentrated Hispanic populations. CVS also considers where we can have the greatest impact on the health of those communities by fostering connections and improving access to affordable health care,” said Mayra Boitel, vice president and chief merchant of alternative formats at CVS Health.
Eleven of the 12 stores, including four in New York City, were CVS locations that were converted to CVS Pharmacy y más between October and Dec. 11, Boitel said. A CVS in Trenton, New Jersey, is being converted in early February, she said. Of the four New York City stores, two are in Queens — in Ridgewood and Jackson Heights — and two are in the Bronx.
The Central Islip store reopened as CVS Pharmacy y más Dec. 4, she said.
Of Central Islip’s 31,846 residents, 45.9% were Hispanic or Latino, according to five-year estimates the U.S. Census Bureau released in 2018. By comparison, 31.3% of the residents in the Town of Islip and 20.2% in Suffolk County were Hispanic or Latino in 2019, according to the most recent census estimates.
A Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based company, CVS Health Corp. has more than 9,900 retail locations in the United States.
The company launched CVS Pharmacy y más in 2015. There are now more than 200 locations in more than 90 cities across California, Florida, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and Puerto Rico, the chain said. The newest 12 stores are the first of their kind in the tristate area.
Retail Roundup is a column about major retail news on Long Island — store openings, closings, expansions, acquisitions, etc. — that is published online and in the Monday paper. To read more of these columns, click here. If you have news to share, please send an email to Newsday reporter Tory N. Parrish at [email protected].
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.