Community Pharmacy Design by Retail Design Consultants

The Murray Pharmacy in East Kilbride has been serving the local community for close to 40 years and was acquired in 2017 by the Majhu family as part of their Scotland-wide pharmacy portfolio.

Owner Pharmacist Anish Majhu had been considering a redesign for a while but when the implications of the pandemic became obvious, he knew he had to pivot the pharmacy offering together with a complete internal redesign incorporating automation.

Anish commented:

“Our item count has increased by approximately 40% since the beginning of the pandemic so I had to think strategically about how I wanted to change the business model of the pharmacy to meet the ever-increasing demand.

“The first few months of the pandemic saw us working flat-out to keep up with demand and we now employ between 8 and 10 delivery drivers along with a cohort of 10 full and part-time staff to provide a really high standard of community pharmacy.  However, this increase in demand hasn’t come without its challenges.  I had been thinking for a while about a redesign incorporating automation so the onset of the pandemic really spurred me into action, and I can honestly say it is the best decision I have made.

“My family has been in the community pharmacy sector for a long time.  We have a strong relationship with Terry Cuthill of Retail Design Consultants so when we took the decision to progress, our first point of contact was with Terry.  Together with an innate understanding of how a community pharmacy needs to be designed, Retail Design Consultants has an established reputation on how to cleverly install automation to optimise space.  This was crucial in making the decision on who we were going to appoint because it is a world away from a normal retail fit-out.  Their knowledge of pharmacy design together with incorporating automation was ultimately why we put our faith in Retail Design Consultants.

“As any pharmacy owner knows, there is never a right time to start a refit and doing it in the middle of the worst pandemic for over 100 years was always going to be a challenge.  We were concerned about how we were going to continue to operate when the work was being carried out; however,  Retail Design Consultants temporary solution of creating a working pharmacy in the existing retail and dispensary space whilst creating the design solution for the installation of the BD Rowa robot was a seamless short-term answer to allow us to continue operations.

“What we have now is a very calm, structured and efficient community pharmacy operation with the capacity to grow further as we develop our customer base.  We want our customers to be able to come into a well-designed pharmacy with private areas for consultation, a spacious waiting area and an opportunity to witness a very efficient operation.  It is also true to say that providing an excellently designed working environment has also been a huge morale boost to our staff.  There is far more structure to our whole operation and our staff have space to fulfil their roles in a really calm and pleasant environment.

“We had a vision of what we wanted to achieve and there was a lot of wasted space in the old design and layout.  Retail was a large part of our old offering, so we have reduced that to deliver our core specialism as a dispensing pharmacy.  We now have plenty of hidden gems that have made a big difference and every bit of space is used effectively.  Simple things like little pull-out drawers and other innovative design solutions make a big difference to operations and productivity.  The BD Rowa robot and the new design contribute in equal measure to how efficient we now are at operating as a top-class community pharmacy.

Talking in more detail about the redesign, Terry Cuthill of Retail Design Consultants said:

“I personally have had a long history with this particular pharmacy having originally redesigned it over 20 years ago.  Close collaboration and being able to interpret Anish’s vision has been the key to the success of this project.

“When the family took over the pharmacy in 2017, signage and external graphics were updated at that stage in turquoise and white and those colours have been complimented internally with the introduction of avola grey shelving and flooring.

“Our main remit was to make much better use of the space to create a larger dispensing pharmacy incorporating automation and dedicated areas within the design for retail, patient seating, a consultation room and a private advice area.

“We approached this by completely reimagining the layout including the creation of outputs on either side of the robot with surrounding storage areas and this lent itself to creating a spacious and dedicated area for deliveries and for script collection.   There is also an easy pharmacist and patient access to the consultation room and a forward-facing COVID-secure counter.  Directly facing the counter, we have also created a comfortable and spacious waiting area.

“The dispensary is now nearly three times the size it was and although the new design has seen a reduction in retail space, there is still an aesthetically pleasing and broad retail offering presented on floor to ceiling avola grey shelving on the internal-facing walls, complimenting the turquoise and white colour theme of the external fascia and window graphics.”

Anish concluded:

“The new design is even better than we imagined it would be.  It is true to say that beforehand, things were pretty frantic and it wasn’t the most pleasant environment to work in.  When we first started the process of redesigning, we couldn’t have envisioned the fundamental change it has brought to our whole operation, both at a practical level and in terms of our staff being happy in their workplace.  Retail Design Consultants input has been instrumental to that change in our operations, productivity and staff morale.”