Walgreens' parent company, Walgreens Boots Alliance, wants its 8,700 brick-and-mortar locations to eventually double as fulfillment centers. According to The Wall Street Journal, Walgreens stores will soon task their employees with picking and packing items for same-day delivery through third-party applications such as DoorDash and Uber.

Walgreens said that the new initiative will make the management of online orders more efficient by creating a single system for handling goods. Previously, the company had to rely on a separate distribution network to fulfill its e-commerce orders.

This comes after the pharmacy giant recently closed an e-commerce warehouse located in Edwardsville, Illinois that was used to fulfill orders for household items.

During the quarter that ended August 31, 2023, Walgreens reported its comparable retail sales (excluding pharmacy) fell by 3.3% year-over-year. The company also said that online orders for retail goods increased by 14.2% during the quarter.

Walgreens has also been working to streamline its pharmacy order fulfillment processes over the last three years. Since 2020, the company has opened 11 automated micro-fulfillment centers to fill online prescription orders. The organization said that those facilities fill 2.3 million prescriptions each week across 29 states.