As the U.S. marketplace is reshaped by the country’s growing cultural diversity, one of the pivotal consumer segments that every mass retailer will have to address is comprised of people whose heritage goes back to Spain, Mexico, Latin America and parts of the Caribbean.

Hispanics are already the nation’s biggest minority group, whose 55 million members account for 17% of the population, and their ranks are increasing rapidly. The Census Bureau estimates that by 2060 there will be 119 million Hispanics living in the U.S., or nearly 30% of all residents. No operator of discount, drug or supermarket chains can afford not to address such a large and vibrant consumer ­segment.

Companies are responding to the opportunity in a variety of ways, perhaps none more effectively than CVS Health, which recently brought its CVS Pharmacy y más format to greater Los Angeles. The retailer started to get serious about the Hispanic market two years ago, when it purchased Navarro Discount Pharmacy, the largest Hispanic-owned drug chain in the country. Founded by a Cuban immigrant, Navarro emerged over the course of a half-century as a flourishing 33-store, $340 million chain in south Florida by staying in sync with the needs of Hispanic consumers and offering many products and services not found in traditional drug stores.

While the acquisition of Navarro bolstered CVS’ presence in Florida, the more significant impact of the deal was the know-how it provided about connecting with Hispanic shoppers. The company was quick to capitalize on those insights with the development of CVS Pharmacy y más, which debuted in Miami in June 2015. Like Navarro outlets, those 12 stores target the preferences of the Cuban-dominated Hispanic population there.

Now CVS Pharmacy y más has arrived in Southern California. At the nine locations in greater Los Angeles, Hispanic consumers can take advantage of bilingual customer service; a product mix that features some 1,500 new items, including many of the most popular Hispanic brands in such categories as O-T-Cs, beauty care and consumables; and services like bill payment and money transfers.

“With CVS Pharmacy y más we did more than just add more Hispanic products on our shelves,” says CVS chief of Hispanic consumer growth Gabe Navarro, who joined the company in the wake of the Navarro acquisition. “We took a strategic look to truly understand what the Hispanic consumer wanted in a drug store and how we could fulfill some of their unmet needs.”
Navarro and his colleagues at CVS know that a one-size-fits-all approach will not bring success in the Hispanic market. Unlike the CVS Pharmacy y más locations in Miami, the ones in Los Angeles serve a customer base in which the majority of shoppers have ties with Mexico, not Cuba. Stores in other urban areas might, for example, have heavy concentrations of Puerto Rican or Dominican customers. The drug chain is working to understand those differences within the Hispanic community and equip itself to make subtle but significant changes in CVS Pharmacy y más stores to better meet the needs of the neighborhoods they serve.

The drug chain doesn’t have all the answers when it comes to meeting the needs of Hispanics, but, with every CVS Pharmacy y más it opens, it demonstrates its commitment to learning more about those consumers and doing a better job serving them. In light of the size and importance of the demographic group, other mass retailers should ask themselves if they need to augment their efforts to reach the Hispanic shopper.