Small-town Covington drug store has big, new owner | Business News

Jerry Braswell remembers the early days of his drug store on Tyler Street in Covington. He and his wife, Wanda, opened it in 1981, and Covington at the time was still very much a small town.

“One time I left the store and headed to the interstate on Tyler Street and saw seven cars. Seven!” he said. “Covington exploded and it’s still exploding.” 

Braswell’s drug store, aptly named Braswell Drugs, has grown right along with the city it inhabits. In 1995, the original pharmacy gave way to a new, larger store built on roughly the same site in the shadow of St. Tammany Parish Hospital.

Meanwhile, the hospital, now called St. Tammany Health System, continued spreading around the drug store.

In 2018, Braswell sold the drug store to Emily Webber and Chris Martin. Then this fall, Martin sold it to the hospital.

‘It just made sense’

Joan Coffman, President and CEO of St. Tammany Health System, said she always thought acquiring Braswell’s would be a good strategic move for the hospital, even though it already has an on-site pharmacy. A few years ago she asked Martin and Webber if they had any interest in selling. They didn’t.

“I told them to let me know if they ever wanted to sell,” Coffman said.

After Webber died last year, Martin, who also owns pharmacies in Alabama, reached out, Coffman said.

“It just made sense,” Coffman said of buying the store. “This allows us to truly expand our retail arm in the community.”

On Sept. 15,  St. Tammany Hospital Service District No. 1, which operates the health system, bought the business for just over $2 million, records show.

Coffman said the pharmacy will continue to operate under the Braswell name, and no other changes are planned, which means customers can pick up their prescriptions while they browse shelves stocked with everything from baby clothes to seasonal home decorations.

Braswell’s 19 employees also will keep their jobs, she said.

“It’s really about catching the patients where they are,” she said.

Big business

The prescription drug business in the U.S. is huge — $601 billion in 2021, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report.

Walter Lane, a University of New Orleans health care economist who also serves on the board of Slidell Memorial Hospital, said he doesn’t know of any other hospitals that have bought retail pharmacy outlets. But in this case, he thinks Braswell’s location could help a ready supply of customers that use the hospital.

Like other independent pharmacies, Braswell said competing with the likes of Walgreens, CVS and Walmart required a higher level of customer service. Even as the store grew staff strived to maintain the store’s small-town feel.

Paula Fricker, who joined Braswell’s in 1989 and will continue to manage the pharmacy, said knowing customers’ names is important, even when filling some 9,000-10,000 prescriptions each month.

“I know everybody by name, and it’s going to stay that way,” Fricker said. “You treat customers as you’d want your mom or dad to be treated. We get people in and out in a hurry. And we answer the phone on the first ring – I preach that to my technicians.”

As for Braswell, he says he’s typically not sentimental about the past, but that watching the store he and his wife opened more than 40 years ago change hands again evokes memories of the hard work it took to become a success.

There were a lot of good times along the way. And so much has changed. Tyler Street, for instance, isn’t the country road it once was — nearly 34,000 vehicles used the road daily, according to a 2022 state highway department count. 

“We met a lot of people,” he said. “I probably knew at least 90% of our customers.”