Caring for customers is key for Owl Pharmacies

In the land of big box everything, Owl Pharmacies in Cheney and Medical Lake have carved out their niche for success by being the place where customers are still a name and not a number.

That is the way it has been for Cheney's oldest operating business - the third oldest pharmacy in the state of Washington - and it's the way things will continue according to new owner Amanda Goyke.

She purchased the business, which also includes pharmacies in Spokane and Fairfield, from longtime owner Fritz McGinnis last year. Goyke came to Cheney in 2007 and makes a daily commute from Rosalia where her husband, Paul, farms with his family.

Goyke, a mother of three, was born in Amarillo, grew up in Texas, but later attended high school in Woodland, Wash. near Vancouver, Wash. On the family farm they grow wheat, peas, barley, garbanzo beans, canola and mustard.

The Cheney Owl dates back to the 1880s, McGinnis said and from what he understands, the name reflects the age-old idea of the owl being wise, especially in medicine.

McGinnis, a 1965 Shadle Park High School graduate, went on to wrestle on scholarship at Washington State University and graduated in 1971. He came to Cheney in 1976 when he was 29 after spending time in a variety of other larger pharmacies.

Also a WSU grad, Goyke had interned with McGinnis and he remembered her when an opening needed to be filled. Goyke had worked in that corporate pharmacy world and was in desperate need of new surroundings, she said.

Goyke began the 26-mile trek to Cheney in the first of what would become two of the snowiest winters in history. "(U.S. Highway) 195 gets closed down a lot with drifts," Goyke said. "I had my pickup so I was pretty well equipped to deal with the weather."

"She's far more intelligent than me in the first place," McGinnis said in a self-deprecating manner. "She knows how to work, she's good with customers."

And customer service is the foundation for success in a business that has so much competition, both close by in Cheney, and a 20-minute drive away in either Spokane or Airway Heights.

McGinnis has spent many a holiday answering a frantic call for medicine and dutifully trekking to the store to help someone in need, no matter the hour.

If a customer has a choice they're likely going to go where they know your name and ask how your family's doing, McGinnis said. "The prescription is not the product, the product is the pharmacist," he added.

There's also the time element for today's busy population. "To walk through a 100,000 square-foot Walmart to get a box of aspirin is ridiculous," McGinnis said.

That's how Owl has gained business, Goyke said. "We've transferred them (customers) from big box stores because we can get them in and out quicker."

As with virtually every other business on the planet, pharmacies have changed a great deal from when McGinnis first stepped behind the counter 40 years ago.

"When I came here in 1976 we averaged 35 scripts a day, but we did it on a typewriter," McGinnis said. Computers came in the mid-1980s and thank goodness.

"Now we're in the hundreds (of prescriptions)," he added.

In the early days a $17-$18 order was big, most prescriptions were $5 or $6, McGinnis said.

There was a 30-percent margin in the pharmacy. "Now you're lucky if you have 10 percent," McGinnis said as insurance companies have become a new middle man in the business.

"When I started out we were probably 60 or 70 percent cash," McGinnis said. "Now cash seldom exists as far as (true) cash, we're probably 95 percent third-party."

The Owl stocks about 1,000 different medicines at any given time, worth anywhere from $275,000 – $400,000. Each carries an expiration date and are inspected regularly. "If a state inspection reveals (an) outdated product, you get your butt fined real quick," McGinnis said.

Virtually all medicines are commercially produced with the only traditional "compounding" or manufacturing being adding certain ingredients to cough medicine to combat upset stomach or sore throat.

The small pharmacy is a rare breed these days, McGinnis said. "There's not that many of us independent human beings left."

But McGinnis, who still works part-time, puts great confidence in Goyke to keep what he calls "the franchise of four" that is Owl Pharmacies prospering well into the future.

"I'd love to see the Owl Pharmacy keep going and she's the one to do it," McGinnis said.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].