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Independent Pharmacist Bryce Allfrey got an early Christmas present that will not only keep on giving—but may save lives.
In late December, his Lincolnton pharmacy, Crawford and Breazeale Drug Co., was chosen as one of the first pharmacy providers in his Georgia region to administer the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
“The first batch will serve about 100 healthcare providers and long-term care facility residents,” said Allfrey by phone as he was closing up the 101-year-old pharmacy for the Christmas holiday.
Allfrey expects to get more vaccine and be able to serve his regular customers, who have stuck with him from the outset of the pandemic, when he applied to the FDA to help his community.
“In early 2020, The Food and Drug Administration, as well as the Georgia Board of Pharmacy, put out calls for independent pharmacies to step up and start making the hand sanitizer,” said Allfrey.
He rallied his team at the pharmacy to source ingredients like rubbing alcohol, distilled water, bottles and labels. They began making hand sanitizer during breaks each day and after hours.
“We are required to following the FDA’s recipe,” he said. “It has to meet their guidelines, and we have to attach drug fact labels on every bottle showing we follow those standards. That label serves as our verification if the agency sent an inspector to review our mixture.”
Allfrey has sold or donated more than 750 gallons to customers at the iconic store, to residents in his Evans neighborhood, and to first responders such as the Columbia and Lincoln county sheriffs’ offices, Wills Memorial Hospital in Washington, Ga., and to the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta and the Atlanta Braves organization.
“Deputies and health care workers are on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic,” Allfrey said. “Giving them a donation of hand sanitizer plays a small but important role in helping protect themselves, their coworkers and their patients while on the job. This is something we can do to help out, so why not do it?”
Allfrey and his wife and four daughters moved in 2016 from a comfortable position at a large pharmacy chain in Utah to enjoy the small-town life and to eventually take over the legacy pharmacy in Lincolnton.
It is also a family affair as neighbors in his Riverwood subdivision in Evans routinely reached out to his wife to buy hard-to-find hand sanitizer.
“We’d leave the boxes (for Riverwood residents) on the porch or put in a zip-lock bag in the mailbox,” said Kella Allfrey, who has now helped nearly 100 families in the subdivision that has 1.400 families.
Allfrey’s kids helped pack the hand sanitizer in Lincolnton and at home.
“I would bring bottles home for my wife to distribute based on the orders she was getting, she turned into a pretty good order fulfillment specialist,” said Allfrey.
The pharmacist says this “out-of-the-box” thinking is not something his former big-box employers would have allowed.
“For us, having a pharmacy in small town…opened up eyes and changed the perception…that independent pharmacy is more expensive and can’t do what a normal pharmacy does. We’ve showed how much more we can do than an average pharmacy chain by adapting on the fly and making an impact on our community,” he added.
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One other example is how Allfrey’s prescription delivery service has grown during the pandemic and during the holiday crunch. They were able to avoid the delivery snafus that plagued other providers.
“Some customers in Columbia and McDuffie Counties say the postal service can’t track down their medicine or that life-saving medicines are sitting in a warehouse somewhere… exposed to the extremes,” he added.
Allfrey says some independent pharmacies have either suffered or closed. He says his new norm is a lot of hard work for him and his staff, but he believes his goodwill in the community will pay off in the future. “We will fight to succeed in business,” he said.
Neil Gordon is a Business Writer with The Augusta Press. Reach him at neil.gordon@theaugustapress.com
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