From the time Natalie Krohn Breland and her brother, Dr. Jason Krohn, were old enough to stick price stickers on merchandise, they have worked at Beach Pharmacy.
“There is not a job inside this business that one of the two of us has not done at some point in our lives,” says Breland, now the store’s business manager. “Merchandising, cashier, delivery driver, business manager and pharmacist — we’ve done it all.”
The pharmacy’s founders, Gus Carraway and Ray Calvert, hired Breland’s father, Larry Krohn, straight out of pharmacy school, and he assumed ownership in 1991. The store’s legacy continues, as some of its patrons have been doing business there for over half a century.
By far the biggest challenge in that time was Hurricane Katrina, which forced the business to relocate from the corner of Highway 90 and Teagarden Road to its present location on Cowan Road.
“While I don’t believe my father, mother, brother or myself were surprised by what we found when it was over, it still threw us into a survival mode …” Breland recalls. “However, our livelihood, and those of our staff and customers, depended on us jumping into action to reopen as quickly as possible.”
When the new location opened in 2007, there was more room to expand into gifts, which filled the void left by decreased demand for items like school supplies and Christmas wrapping paper. Technology and service upgrades over the years have allowed the store to progress with the times, according to Breland, while also staying true to its roots.
NOT YOUR TYPICAL PHARMACY
Beach Pharmacy is particularly proud of its unique offerings, including its compounding service.
“About 80 percent of our compounding services are specifically bioidentical hormones for women; we began this service in 1997,” Breland explains. “Bioidentical hormones use ‘structurally identical’ hormones to what is found in the human body (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone); they are not synthetic hormones like are found in some mass-manufactured hormone medications.” While manufactured testosterone is only available in higher doses, she adds, compounding allows it to be dosed down to levels appropriate for women’s use.
In 2015, the pharmacy added another hard-to-find offering with its med-packaging service. The program works by syncing each medication to the same refill cycle, then packaging each daily dose of medication into individual bags labeled with the day and time it should be taken.
“Women oftentimes take the lead in families for themselves, their spouse or for aging parents in health care,” Breland says. “Our packaging service focuses on making sure that a patient is taking all of his or her medication every day and taking it correctly.”
These packages typically are done for a 28-day cycle, but some people prefer to receive their meds in 90-day cycles, Breland says, “and we can accommodate that as well.”
“Regardless,” she adds, “this method is much less cumbersome and leaves much less room for error than old-school pill-planner boxes and blister packs.”
EARNING LOYALTY, MAINTAINING HIGH STANDARDS
Now that her father is mostly retired, Breland deems it important for her and her brother to maintain the high standard he set. He made serving the community his priority, and he has formed long-lasting relationships with customers, learning their names, knowing their stories and treating them like family.
“Their loyalty was not taken for granted by him, and it is not taken for granted by my brother and me,” Breland says. “Continuing our family’s legacy will be our greatest achievement.”