Staff Writer

Chef Glen said he is always ready to recite the TV script he used to sell his spray-on barbecue sauce.

The former pitchman, who legally changed his name to Chef Glen, was equally effusive about the new Walgreens Pharmacy as it opened for business Tuesday morning.

“We have one of these on every corner in Ft. Lauderdale,” Glen said. “We are in there three times a day.”

Glen made it a point to be the first customer at the Oak Hill Plaza store. He and his wife, Betsy Phillips, were in town to visit her 92-year-old father, Kenneth W. Phillips. They arrived before 8 a.m., and brought photos to be digitized with the help of staffer Tery Mattison, a Cape Elizabeth resident.

While his wife sipped a cup of coffee, Glen said they would bring her father to the store later that day, because he didn’t understand why the opening was so exciting.

Store manager Seth Jirikowic hopes customers will notice the convenience and large retail space with a drive-through window where they can pick up prescriptions.

“We get people in and out more quickly than most stores,” he said.

Jirikowic said a sneak preview open house Monday evening showed the town is ready for the national chain.

“We had a great turnout, one of the best in the state,” said Jirikowic, who helped open a store in Norway while serving as an assistant manager.

Walgreens District Manager Greg Paramantgis said the 15,000-square-foot store at the corner of Routes 1 and 114 is the 10th opened in Maine. A new store in Portland will open in a few weeks.

Built on the site of a former bank and Burger King, the store fits the company strategy of finding well-traveled areas for store locations matched with demographics of potential customers who need to fill prescriptions, Paramantgis said.

“First we look at the needs of the town, then we pick a nice corner,” he said.

Store construction began last fall, and Jirikowic said shelves and aisles with toys, cards, food, soda, wine and beer were stocked for two weeks before the open house.

Jirikowic and pharmacy manager Andrew Gray are Walgreens employees who have transferred to the new store. Jirikowic said the store will be staffed by at least 20 employees, and many will work full time.

Gray said the store will have two full-time pharmacists, another to fill in and a pharmacy technician.

Impressed customers did not all come from Florida. Higgins Beach resident Lauraine Foley said the store lived up to everything she had anticipated.

“I have been waiting for this place,” she said. “It is wonderful, something we needed and it gives everybody a little competition.”

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219