Message from the CEO

Thank you for being a customer of Peoples Pharmacy. As you may know, we have been serving the Austin community since 1980 when Bill Swail opened his first two stores. Our mission is to empower people to make educated health choices while providing prompt, friendly service and quality products. We weigh every decision we make according to that goal.

For those of you who are regular customers of Peoples, you have likely noticed several changes recently implemented, primarily related to reduced store hours, some store closures on weekends, and modified staffing levels at different times of the day. As the company has worked to recover from the devastating impact that Covid had on our daily business, operational changes such as these were necessary to ensure our financial viability for the future.

As you have no doubt seen in countless news stories over the past three years, Covid has had an enormous impact on all businesses, and especially retail stores. When everything was locked down in the spring of 2020, all of us were forced to greatly increase our online ordering and use of delivery services, such as Amazon or Instacart, habituating customers to opt for on-line ordering rather than in-store shopping.  Just as we thought we were done with Covid, multiple new challenges arose related to retaining employees, increasing wages, and addressing the impact of inflation on both costs to running a business and on spending by customers.

We have sought to reduce costs by reducing our store hours, recognizing that these changes could negatively impact some customers by making us less convenient. Without making those changes to reduce costs, the company would be in trouble.  I will not detail the litany of other changes that have been made or are in the process of being made right now. Many of them are related to behind-the-scenes operations and should not be noticeable to our customers. But I did want to address the changes and let you know why we have put these in place.

We appreciate your business and your loyalty. I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to lead a company that has such strong relationships with its customers. We appreciate you sharing with your friends (and especially new Austinites) why you shop at Peoples and what makes us different than other pharmacies and wellness stores in Austin. Our overarching goal is to continue to provide the best customer service and the most knowledgeable staff in Austin so that we can continue our mission of educating individuals to make the best health choices. We do not take the last 40+ years for granted, and we will do all that we can to continue serving the Austin community for the next 40+ years.

Thank you,
Stephen Erickson, CEO