Saturday, August 11, 2012

K & B Lafayette Johnson St. (Now also a Rite Aid)

Part 2 of the two part Lafayette K and B series.

For more info please check out this book about the history of K and B drug stores available on Amazon and in several Louisiana bookstores. This book is a must read for any fan of K and B drugstores.
Here is another example of a former K and B that still contains many K and B fixtures in use. I am glad that Rite Aid has left some locations nearly unchanged after 15 years.
This store has a larger Pharmacy entrance than the previous store.

More purple carpeted walls in front of the pharmacy counter at this location.
If the Rite Aid sign was not in the far right corner of this picture you would believe this photo was taken when this store was K and B in the 1990's. Except K and B usually stacked their ice coolers with the K and B logo above the liquor and beverages.
In several sections of this store the K and B purple slats are still being used to help shoppers locate products.
In the background you can see the mirrored background in the cosmetics area with the K and B purple slats.
A K and B tote cart still being used, but I could not see a logo like the shopping carts used to have.

5 comments:

  1. Rite aid clearly just couldn't be bothered updating stores in Louisiana. The former KB in Alexandria mall stayed 100% KB. Looked like rite aid just slapped their logos over the KB ones. However this location closed as part of rife aid's ongoing financial difficulties and it was replaced by the expanded shoe dept. so no pictures to prove it.

    I wonder if the company's difficulties are why they haven't bothered fully rebranding....

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  2. Rite Aid hasn't updated K&B because none of these stores do near the business they did as K&B. There's no profit to justify a full remodel on most. Several Shreveport stores have been fully remodeled, as have a few others. A Monroe store and another store in Bayou Vista/Morgan City were completely replaced with a new Rite Aid build, which looks pretty nice.

    CVS did a much better job with the Eckerd stores, though some are showing their age because not much has been done since.

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    Replies
    1. It seems that in the 1st year that Rite Aid took over the stores was when most of the stores were rebuilt or remodeled. There have not been many rebuilt or remodeled stores since then. Several of the stores have closed especially outside of the New Orleans area.

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    2. That's correct. All the former mall stores are gone (Alexandria, Lafayette, Oakwood). Mall pharmacies don't generate the foot traffic they needed to be profitable. Additionally, in the other places you mention, it was the same problem. When I moved to Lafayette in 2000, there were 6 Rite Aid stores. There are now 3, and they were the three newest stores. Rite Aid tried the 6-8 stores K&B had in Texas, but all of those are gone now.

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    3. Southland Mall in Houma is the only mall that I can think of that still has a Rite Aid. All of the malls in the Houston area don't have pharmacies anymore either there were a few that made it to the year 2000, but they are long gone now.

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