The owner of the pharmacy inside the St. Albert Target store woke to bad news on Jan. 15.
In a text message from one of her pharmacists, Karen Moak learned that Target was closing all of its Canadian stores within months.
The pharmacy, the first venture into private ownership for Moak, had been inside the store for two years, and at first this seemed like the end.
Yet less than three months after Target’s announcement, Moak reopened in the downtown of St. Albert, at 41 St. Thomas St., next to Pose Hair. And with an old-fashioned ice cream parlour and cafĂ© in the works, Midtown Apothecary means to reinvent a more traditional model of the business; one that makes the pharmacy a place to gather, and to be among friends.
“Coming from Target, which is a big store, this really felt like a good location because we will be part of the community here,” she says. “And having the ice cream parlour section will allow us to sit down and talk with our patients on a different level.”
The cafĂ© section isn’t quite finished yet. Moak had to improvise after Target announced this week that its stores will close even sooner than expected. St. Albert’s Target is closing on April 8.
So the new pharmacy opened Wednesday, with shelves of medication and a register tucked into one corner, while construction of the café, the pharmacy area, and two patient rooms, continues in another.
By early May, just before the farmers’ market starts, Moak hopes the whole shop will be ready: with customers enjoying ice cream and slushies on old-fashioned stools by the soda fountain, or having biscuits and coffee at the breakfast bar next to the window.
They will buy an oven to bake pies and pastries in. And maybe they can organize a seniors’ tea, she says. One of her pharmacists, from Britain, will now run the cafĂ© and ice cream counter. She fits perfectly into the picture, she laughs.
“I always thought, if I ever own a pharmacy, that’s what I would do. Just the old-style soda fountain counter,” she says. “It will be a very different experience for all of us, a different community experience.”
Moak has been in the business for over 20 years. Earlier in her career, she worked as a relief pharmacist, moving between stores every day. But that wasn’t rewarding, she says. She opened the Target pharmacy because she wants to enjoy her job, and meet customers on a more personal level. Without that relationship, the work, it means nothing, she says.
But that doesn’t make it easy to close one shop and open another. The last two months were emotional. The news from Target came as a shock, and the short deadline rushed them into making a decision. It was the feedback from their customers that inspired them to keep things going, she says.
“When Target first announced they were closing, we were quite devastated,” she says. “But we had such good support from our current clientele that it really inspired us to continue. That’s the real reason we came down here. Otherwise, it would have been too scary.”
