CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM I MARCH 18, 2024
Pendulum swing for DEI How will Chicago C-suites navigate the pivot on 2020’s heavily touted buzzword? | PAGE 13
The most arduous job at Walgreens
It’s 11 p.m. Who’s up for martinis or fries?
Mary Langowski has one of the most important tasks at the company — turning around a still unproven and unprofitable health care strategy
To meet demand, restaurants are extending hours, and launching happy hours that flirt with midnight
By Katherine Davis
Walgreens Boots Alliance’s new health care chief is set to face the tough task of optimizing and refining the company’s health care strategy, a years-long effort that is not yet profitable. Mary Langowski, a seasoned health care technology veteran who spent time at CVS Health, is replacing John Driscoll as Walgreens’ president of U.S. health
care, the Deerfield-based company announced last month as new CEO Tim Wentworth solidified his leadership team. Driscoll, who is moving to a paid senior advisory role, originally joined Walgreens in 2022 with the ambitious task to help reinvent the company as a health care player. The industry and even some consumers have begun to accept the new identity of Walgreens,
By Ally Marotti
Mary Langowski
which has long been known as a pharmacy retail enterprise. However, investors have yet to get excited by the health care transition due to the segment’s lackluster performance. Now it’s up to Langowski, 46, to push the health care segment See WALGREENS on Page 23
Thomas Rogers emerged from the basement office of his Lincoln Park restaurant recently at 11:30 p.m., expecting quiet. Instead, he was met with a deafening roar. John’s Food & Wine, which typically closes at 11 p.m., was full of customers. “It’s not like people were just lingering (after dinner),” he says. “They were coming into the restaurant at 10:30, 11 o’clock.” Restaurant operators around
the city say Chicago diners are staying out later. In the past six months or so, dinner reservations have pushed back as people increasingly seek places to sit down and eat after 9 p.m. It’s a change from the years following the pandemic, when customers opted to eat dinner earlier, visit only one place per evening and return home. In fact, late nights at both fine-dining and casual restau-
VOL. 47, NO. 11 l COPYRIGHT 2024 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
BUSINESS Bally’s hunting for $800 million to kick off city casino project. PAGE 2
REAL ESTATE Steelcase leaving the Merchandise Mart after more than 50 years for Fulton Market District. PAGE 4
See DINING on Page 20
ALEXANDER GOULETAS / ORGANIC HEADSHOTS
Kimberly Dowdell, (left), and Rana Lee