Sav-on Drugs Fun Facts
• Pioneers of the retail business
• "Serve Yourself and Save the Difference"
• We were the Wal-Mart of the 50's & 60's
• The slogan “A GREAT Place to Shop” pre-dated the slogan “Count on People Who Care” and was used in all advertising.
• Fair prices, but great customer service!! Our focus from the beginning
• We were the Cadillac of the Drug Store Business
• Best of the West
• We invented mentoring we grew our Managers from the ground up
50's & 60 's
• The weekly radio special went into effect in the 60’s. It was always accompanied by the Sav-on jingle . . . “Sav-on, Sav-on, join the Sav-on hit parade, it’s fun to serve yourself and save at Sav-on Drug Stores, Sav-on Drug Stores . . . .BOOM-BOOM . . . Sav-on!”
• In 1956, we opened our first store in Orange County, where the #5 Freeway ended, at Euclid avenue in Anaheim.
• Disneyland opened in July 1955
• All weekly “as advertised” signs printed centrally and distributed via tote box
• 3 candy bars for 10 cents
• Every store had an Ice Cream department-
• In 1950, ice cream cones were 4 cents and 8 cents, hand packed was 25 cents/pint and 49 cents/qt.
• We hand packed pints and quarts all day long!!!
• It was an agonizing decision in 1954 to raise the price to 5 cents/10 cents. and to 29 cents and 59 cents for hand packed ice cream. . . . . customers were upset about the increase.
• Half gallons were 55 cents for the square and 69 cents for the round.
• In the early 50’s, our only ice cream supplier was Carnation. It wasn’t until 1956 that we finally decided to give Arden a try. . . every other new store alternated from store to store between Arden and Carnation Ice Cream.
• We also sold nuts, popcorn, and hot-fudge sundaes We had to wear paper hats!
• We made Icee successful
• Pink, white & blue uniforms...always 1 person wearing the wrong color!
50's & 60 's
• In the early 50’s, Kotex and Modess needed to be individually wrapped with plain grey butcher paper/scotch taped, in the back room before stacking on the shelves. . . didn’t want to offend anybody. ??
• We tested Fast-food "Sav-On Burgers" in South Gate, Downey, and Buena Park
• A movie matinee was 10cents!
• Gas was 26 cents a gallon
• We sold Goldfish and Tropical Fish
• Parakeets: Gordon Rager mighty hunter, catching parakeets 200 escaped in the Monterey Park store
• Baby alligators- Norwalk store: This was well before General Liability claims
• Free gift wrap and Lay away at Christmas
• $5.00 holds anything till Dec._ 24th
• 1000 cases of toys received, marked on the street, and put out on the night crew on top of every aisle with metal overheads.
• But that was only after we finally decided to change from wooden overheads and buy aluminum in the 60’s, they were a whole lot easier to put up and store each Christmas season!
• We covered the backstock on the sidewalk with a tarp!
• Remember the wheel goods? Boys’ and girls’ bikes, layaway pickup on Christmas eve, wrong bike a girls instead of boys!
• Remember the 66-cent toy sale the day after Thanksgiving?
• We were the number one toy retailer at Christmas
• Blue chip stamps- stamp booth where you answered the phone
• Dress- crepe dresses, starch uniforms, gray jackets
• Long sleeve gold sport coat-You earned your sleeves
• Everyone had the SAME FIRST NAME: Mr.
• It took forever to make store manager!
• Every item in the store was ordered by control card
• In 1961-62, we tested a new thing called “BankAmericard” in our Newport Beach store . . . next door to a Bank of America. We thought it was great to have 10-15% of our sales devoted to this new credit card. . . . .handwritten up by cashiers on duplicate forms. . . .Finally went chain wide with it.
• Line of communication: Green, brown, white bulletin
• Code #3 phone communications
• Inventory: we counted everything manually
• Remember the "Timex Towers"
• The Zippo lighters
• Cross Pens
• Remington or Norelco?
• Replacement blades for both
More Amazing Memories
• Sav-on Drugs was the largest retailer of cosmetics in So California in the 60’s and 70’s…..Source LA Times “Last Place Purchased” poll. This is something Dee Gardner and the entire company was especially proud of…..
• There was an entire store of everything in the back room
• Shipments took 3 weeks to receive
• Quick marks, monarch machines, pin ticket machines
• all manual No Baler: Trash Rooms-We had to stomp the cardboard
• Pony express payroll-Stores brought their timecards from one store to another on Mondays
• Full time Marking girl or guy in every store
• 2Full Time receivers
• 4 Full Time cosmeticians
• 4 Full Time Ice Cream Dippers
• We sold Bikes, wagons, scooters, etc
• At Christmas all work was done by the Sav-on associates-We hired lots of Seasonal help...that's how most of us started...it was just a Xmas job!
• The cash deposit was counted in the office
• Each day the bookkeeper rolled all the excess coin like a bank
• We had to answer every phone call-No JVR
• No Pharmacy in and out window
• The pharmacist was 1 foot higher than the customers
• We bagged every Prescription, and they were paid for upfront we hoped!
• The first direct Doctor line into the Pharmacy
• Prescriptions were first priced off the pricing wheel and later price card attached to each stock bottle
• Prescriptions billed to insurance – we filled out by hand the Universal Claim Form
• Remember the Dr's Discount? When we cancelled it?
• In addition to Drs. Discounts, a few stores had doctor credit, and hand wrote invoices of Dr. & Dr. wife purchases on charge slips.
• Dress code for the Pharmacists has never really changed!
• Drug retriever was the first "technology" in the Pharmacy
• In 1969, our VP of Pharmacy, Dr. Carl Vitalie, was appointed to the California State Board of Pharmacy . . .the first chain drug store member of that 5-member board.
• Every RX label was typed by hand on a manual typewriter
• Remember the "Ice Cream Cone Prescription?"
• Every Store Manager was a Man
• We waxed every shelf with Jubilee wax till the bottle slid like magic
• Every Manager used a glass cutter to "glass" every shelf on every table
• Old cash registers with gear shifters and cranks for power failures
• Key-rec 's were used in Receiving
• Remember the old alarm "tape" on the windows?
Merchandising:
• Starting pay rate in the 60 's was $1.35 an hour!
• Grand opening sales-Carloads of Paper, Motor Oil, Kitty Queen and Kal Kan
• We sold a complete line of fishing gear-Remember the Western Hoagie shows?
• Fishing licenses-Don't forget the Trout stamp!
• Remember when the wine category consisted of Manischewitz, Gallo Dry Sherry, Thunderbird and Ripple?
• We had a full table or more of towels, sheets, baby clothing, and more
• Remember the pin ticket machines?
• Remember the 40-foot glass table? Anchor Hocking & Libbey
• Remember the blue cornflower design on the Corning Coffee Percolators
• Flex Shampoo owned the category
• Remember Prell and the pearl?
• Remember Bucky Beaver & Ipana?
• Cup of Noodles Invented we sold it by the carload!
• We brought in a full line of ethnic merchandise because we had "True" Neighborhood marketing! Each store was unique to its customers
• Allied appliances began selling us cosmetics personal care appliances, a brand-new category
• Largest store display on cup of noodles in the United States
• 1 liter of Pepsi-Largest display in United States
• We were the number one retailer of Rose Milk
• We were the number one retailer of Tuffy roll-on Deodorant
• 32-gallon trash cans-we owned the business
• Bleach came in 1 gallon Glass bottles
• 126, 120, 127, 620, 108, 107, 88, Film Sizes!
• Remember AG-1B, 5B, Flashcubes, Magicubes?
• Remember the disc cameras? The SX-70, The Big Shot
• 4 Models of Slide projectors
• 6 Models of Kodak Cameras
• 5 Models of Polaroid Cameras
• The Panasonic RQ-209 Cassette Recorder
• Downey store started testing gift ware, hairpieces, jewelry
• We marked all the Christmas candy in the alley
• We pushed all the merchandise up the shoot-there were no conveyor belts
• We sold record albums from Bertel Co.
• The Craig car stereo displays
Remember when:
• Every store had a tube tester and we sold TV and radio tubes
• Photo processing when Drewery Photo invented Overnight processing in the Sav-on stores
• At Christmas we had tree lots and sold thousands of trees
• Every store had a full-time janitor
• Sav-On was the number one retailer for cologne gift sets, Maybelline gift sets
• We had real Department heads who ran their departments
• Soundesign stereos, Sony color TV's
• Full time Bookkeeper or two in every store
• In 1959 (60?) bookkeepers were delighted to get newfangled coin separators, so they didn’t have to hand separate/rolled coin.
• No credit cards, all cash or checks-Remember the Bad Checks!
• No shelf tags, and never an out of stock
• Cosmetic books were counted every week
• Cosmetic supervisors visited stores and coordinated orders at the office
• We always had kids who would round up shopping carts for an ice cream cone
• Downey was the #1 Hallmark retailer in the United States
• Liquor came from Fred Bofird Remember Count Vasya Vodka?
• Every cosmetic purchase was written up and bagged by the cosmetician
• The day after inventory, 50 trucks were backed up ready to unload because we stopped receiving a week before inventory.
• The set-up crews-Connie, Fern, Dottie, Joyce, Rose
• Margie and Jerry Blatt Remember the Toy shows with the models!
• The soft good shows Vic Barokis was the buyer
• The Christmas shows-always looking for the Hot new items!
• The Wesco housewares shows
• The Brunswig show
• The Kodak show with Bill playing his guitar and everybody having a great time
• Managers trip to Hawaii for a week and they took the wives!
• Golf tournaments
• Security was the name, and Louis spent his time catching shoplifters
• We used the Profit wheel to calculate our prices we actually knew what our margins were!
• No calculators remember "ondrugsave"? The "Charleston" code? "Price check is $7 on aisle 3"
• Bottled water only came in 1 Gallon containers
• No Diet Soda
• No Lite Beer
70's
• Bought out a group of W. T. Grant Stores and moved Sav-ons into them the Lakewood store had the stairway to nowhere
• Remember the big wooden dump bins!
• Everything was manual, no pallet jacks, no forklifts, nothing!
• Hunting for the mountain lion in the Lakewood store? It was a cat!
• At Christmas every full-time associate got a $10.00 bonus and part timers got $5.00.
• Neighborhood marketing: Woodland hills store used to sell saddles and tack!
• No Planograms, everything was done out of your head!
• The first Electronic ordering system-the machine weighed about 20 pounds It took about 20 minutes to transmit-Associates would pick up the phone & you had to start over!
• The International Wholesale Distributor (IWD) person would walk the entire salesfloor ordering from a 5-inch binder
• In the late 70’s, we opened a few Home Center stores in the old WT Grant locations to sell hardware, before Home Depot came to So Cal.
• In the late 70’s we tested a few of the then new calculating cash registers . . so our cashiers didn’t need to learn how to count back change(?).
• Harry Carr & Hollywood Ribbon, Kahn & Cummings, Lester Bass, Merchants Pet, Blatt dist., Mernick, Maxfields candy, Russell Stover, L.B. Ball, Mauren Laurens, Russcraft cards, Pioneer Photo Albums, C.M Paula Giftware, Paul Kenner, Russ Berrie, Paul's Sundries, Baker Systems-Our Great Vendor Partners!
• Minibikes
• Dollarama -We were the first retailer to break this program
• We had to mark every item in just the right spot, then when it went on ad, a red tag as well
• After the ad, we had to pull the red tags off! Cosmeticians used to get PM's (Promotional Monies) paid by the vendors based on sales as tabulated from the handwritten & then bagged orders. No cash registers in Cosmetics or Pharmacy.
• Some stores had dressing rooms
• Royce Union Bicycles
• Timex Computers
• Panasonic calculator-$149.00-adds, subtracts, divides & multiplies
• Atari's & Nintendo's
Remember:
• Vision centers
• Home centers
• Skateboards
• Roller Skates
• CB Radios
• Baseball Cards-Remember how crazy it got?
• Jewelry from Biltmore and Parry
• A.M. Lewis-Orange Empire
80 's and beyond:
• 1982, Sav-on won the NACDS (National Association of Chain Drug Stores) / Women’s Day award first place award for “Internal Communications”
• Freestanding rack with the Store Managers Photo upfront
• Profit planner was introduced-Must be complete every week
• Stores worked on their own budgets
• GM & RXM joint meetings with sports team activities
• Fred Anderson-Security, Neil Parker, Marquida, Louis & Jesse, crawling through the ceilings, etc.
• Bill Johnson brought in Video systems for the first time
• The very first Planograms: We made the Labels on typewriter
• The first Cash Specialist: Jane Brode
• First store scan coordinators
• First District Scan Coordinators Carla & Cecilia, and Tammy & Robin
• Scanning appeared in 1986 and rolled out wide in 1987
• We converted several categories at a time & had to then cover the price tags
• Name changed to Osco-Earnings dropped like a rock
• Name change back to Sav-on sales went through the roof!
• Name Change dinners-Every Sav-on associate attended
• Tommy Lasorda was the Sav-on spokesperson
• No questions asked, 100% refund-what a nightmare!
• Dick Scott & his team
• Manager's picnics, thanks to Tony Pagano
• Always have two companies, to make competitive, like Hallmark and American Greetings
Remember:
• Name Change dinners-Every Sav-on associate attended
• Tommy Lasorda was the Sav-on spokesperson
• No questions asked, 100% refund-what a nightmare!
• Dick Scott & his team
• Manager's picnics, thanks to Tony Pagano
• Always have two companies, to make competitive, like Hallmark and American Greetings
• Laughlin trips-lots of camaraderie & homemade entertainment...
• When we sold the Marina Del Rey office, we made 5 million dollars profit
• We Paid cash for the Payless stores: II million dollars for 13 stores.
• Rumor has it that Dennis Palmer would jump off balcony into the pool at the Anaheim office
• ADC was attached to the office (Anaheim Distribution Center)
• We had tennis courts on the roof of the Anaheim office
• Patty Fast (Nelson-she sends her love) was our training Manager
• Mark cloud was our training specialist (Mark also sends his love)
• The High-tech Meeting room with the "control room" in back
• Manager's meeting- Ounce of gold and gold coins were the prizes Drive for 5% plus club
• Ed Garo & Liquor business
• Different Inventory processes: Remember the counters mumbling "3 at 42 cents", the disc
• Remember the talking trout & talking flowers
• The baby clothes department
• The clothing department & buying shows
• The Pipe display-Dr. Grabow
• The Yarn table & knitting supplies
• Contac Paper
Remember:
• RF Guns
• New NCR 7000 registers
• The Reclamation Center
• Closeout store- Morgue store-John Jenkins
• 1993 Start-up of the first 24-hour stores- Riverside and Anaheim
• Indio Store- First drive-thru Pharmacy
• Think of the numbers of changes in opportunity for our associates! Races, Genders, Families, no barriers!
The most important Fun Fact: No matter what the name was on the building it was always about "The People in the building"
For 60 plus years, we hired and trained each other with a very simple code:
Be the best...
Deliver the best service...
Be proud of where you work...
Be Proud of who you work with...
The slogan "Count on People who Care" was a very accurate description of the business that we all grew up in
Thank you for being a part of the
Sav-on Drug Family