Small Town Pharmacy 2 opens
Business emphasizes personalized service
EAST NORRITON » What goes through your mind when you think of a small town pharmacist?
Someone who is personable, who will take time to chat a little? Maybe even throw in a bit of medical advice?
Someone who won’t make you feel like you’re getting a corporate-style brush-off by filling your prescription and sending you on your way as quickly as possible?
Meet Christopher Pino, pharmacist and co-owner of Small Town Pharmacy 2, which opened its doors recently on the corner of Swede Road and Germantown Pike.
Fresh out of University of the Sciences Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, Pino and business partner Brett Keenan both worked for a big chain drug store, while dreaming of one day opening small pharmacies of their own, like the kind that were common when the long-gone Mario’s Pharmacy appeared in 1960, right across the highway from where the partners now operate their East Norriton location.
“Brett and I talked about doing this because we went to school for healthcare and we wanted to help
people, but with the corporate big box stores, they’re just interested in pushing sales,” Pino said. “You have business people running the show, and rightfully so. It’s a giant business. But the people running the show here are healthcare providers. You walk in and you’ll talk to a pharmacist right away.”
Keenan launched the original Small Town Pharmacy in Quakertown with his wife Dao two years ago.
Pino came on board with the couple for the East Norriton sequel, at a site also owned by the Quakertown landlord, which was once the home of several gas stations,
including Lukoil.
“It’s a good stand-alone location that is centrally located, where we can reach a lot of people,” said Pino, who lives in Harleysville. “I’ve delivered prescriptions to East Norriton, West Norriton, Norristown, Plymouth Meeting.”
As one independent pharmacy after another has been shuttered in recent years due to competition from the big guns, the tide seems to be slowly turning as folks are growing nostalgic for the personal touch, allowed Pino, whose wife, London, a nurse practitioner, might be found filling in behind the counter.
“It’s starting to come back now because people are getting ticked off about the service they get at these places,” he said. “It has nothing
to do with the pharmacists who are at these stores. They’re just not staffing the stores adequately. People are amazed they can get in and out of here in five minutes. We have a conversation with the person. They don’t get that elsewhere, where it’s ‘come back in half an hour.’ You come back and the prescription still isn’t filled. We’re going to give you more personalized service. We’ll do extra things for you. We’ll work with you to get coupons online. Some people are on medications that have co-pays that are hundreds of dollars. That company might be offering coupons where the first 12 months it’s only $20. I had a patient the other day who we saved $700 on three meds,” he added. “He was going to (a nearby supermarket) and
they didn’t tell him that the drug was available in generic, and there were two other medications that were brand-only they didn’t give him the coupons for.”
In another instance, an East Norriton resident found her loyalty to an independent pharmacy in Skippack disrupted when it was taken over by CVS, Pino said.
“She told me when she went back to get a prescription filled the cost had gone from $25 to $160. ‘Take it or leave it’ is basically what they told her, according to her. They’re up-charging it through the roof. We gave her the medication for $20 and she was shocked that we can do that.”
Small Town Pharmacy 2 will not only save customers money on prescriptions but also on over-the-counter products that include Sundance and Nature’s Truth vitamins, Pino noted.
“A lot of people think we’re not going to compete with the chains and they shouldn’t assume that. If there’s a deal at another store, a ‘buy one get one free,’ we can always honor that here. We’re not sticklers on everything. We’re going to match prices on over the counter items too.”
In addition to delivery, other services not commonly found elsewhere are blister packaging — pills are compartmentalized by day of the week for the customer — and compounding.
“With Tamiflu, we called all the pediatricians and told them to just let us know the strength and we can compound it. That got the word out about us through a lot of the moms in the area,” Pino said. “And often if we fill a script to an antibiotic or another one-time thing they’ll come back with their maintenance meds just because they were happy with what we did for them so far. The biggest thing is, we don’t ever want to see anyone going without their medication. If they can only get a couple of days at a time because of their financial situation, we’ll help them with that.”