Owl Drug

[citation needed] The Owl Drug Stores sold medicines and pills, and later ventured into cosmetics,[3] perfumes, and other goods.

[5] In 1903, with their contract with the Whitall Tatum Glass Company, they began making triangular, cobalt-blue bottles of various sizes to store poisons in, which was widely emulated.

[5] In the late 1800s, the main store at Mission and Sixteenth Streets was entirely rebuilt; it reopened in February 1910 with a soda fountain, one of the biggest in San Francisco at the time.

[13] The following year, Owl Drug Company filed for bankruptcy, an act which was described as a "sham, simply a device to defraud preferred stockholders and void burdensome leases".

[17] In 1912, Owl opened its fourth location in Downtown Los Angeles at Spring and 5th streets; an ad described its features:[18] Positively, it's the most modern drug establishment in Western America…money has been lavished on this beautiful store…it has the finest and most sanitary soda fountain in the entire West… made entirely of onyx and German silver…forty-two feet long… as long as the average city lot is wide.

[20] By the late 1930s, the company had dozens of branches across the United States, operating in major cities like New York and Chicago, and especially in the Los Angeles area.

With the aim of providing the convenience of one-stop shopping, Big Owl also incorporated stores-in-store, which was uncommon at the time, including Van de Kamp's Bakeries, See's Candies, a "soda grill" for quick meals and snacks, a barber, cleaners, watch repair, and sales of china and gift items.

It had 12 checkout lanes with electric cash registers, where shoppers could pay for good from all the departments (a relatively recent innovation in markets at the time), 9 entrances for the public, and its parking lot had space for 750 cars.