Customer Care Is Job No. 1 At Old Fashioned Drug Shop

Pharmacist Charles Ciaccio is the go-to guy for all medicinal needs at Harbor Apothecary in Middle Village. After 20 years in the business, a local pharmacist has achieved his goal of opening an old fashioned town drug store in the heart of Middle Village focused solely on filling prescriptions and tending to the public’s specific health needs.

After years of searching for the right spot to set up shop, Charles Ciaccio, 40, recently identified the perfect location for his retail business at 64-59A Dry Harbor Rd.

The decision to call his store Harbor Apothecary instead of Harbor Pharmacy was made to bring a 1940s-style corner drug store back to the neighborhood where Ciacco grew up and still resides in, complete with a classic tin roof and wood floors.

“When people get to learn what apothecary means, they get such a warm feeling. I purposely don’t want to sell Lotto tickets and cigarettes … this is a pharmacy. I don’t want to be like the other places where they’re distracted by selling lawn chairs and other seasonal items,” said the married father of two.

“When a customer walks through the door, that’s what we focus on. One at a time, we give them the attention we would all want when we go someplace else.”

While GNC-type protein powders and other ancillary products are nowhere to be found at the mom-andpop medicine shop, Ciaccio and his staff of four will go the extra mile to ensure that a patient gets the best treatment at reasonable prices.

Harbor Apothecary’s specialized van makes frequent trips to the homes of the sick and elderly to pick up prescriptions, fill them and bring them right back to a patient’s doorstep without any extra service charges.

In addition, Ciacco won’t hesitate to call a physician in hopes of securing a patient with cheaper medication when an insurance co-payment may be too expensive. Generic drugs are also an option.

Ciaccio inherited his “customer is always right” mentality from his father who previously owned and operated a Middle Village delicatessen.

The St. John’s University graduate is well aware of the nationwide recession that the country can’t seem to recover from and works to accommodate his clientele by being as flexible as he can with pricing.

“In an independent pharmacy, you make your own decisions; you make the right decisions for the patient’s care. In a chain store, they put limits on everything. They have to be productive, so they can’t stay that long on the phone,” he observed. “They have a phone system where you can’t even bypass a recorded message.”

Ciaccio went on to explain that the bigger stores often move their pharmacists from one location to the next, which prevents individuals from establishing any sort of relationship with their service provider.

The dedicated medicine specialist spoke from experience when he added: “As a [former] district manager of a chain store, they would tell me to tell the pharmacists to do things I knew were wrong for patient care. This chain mentality is going nowhere fast and people are going to get the worst service.”

In addition to his years of experience, Ciaccio is an active member of the Italian-American Pharmaceutical Society, the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York and a board member of the New York City Pharmacists Society. He has also been actively campaigning for patients’ rights.

The local businessman’s latest venture in Middle Village isn’t his first rodeo. In fact, he formerly owned another independent pharmacy along the Bushwick/Bedford- Stuyvesant border over the period of four years, where he first put his oneon one customer service skills to good use.

His expert staff doesn’t subscribe to the “clock watcher” way of doing things, as Ciaccio and his assistants will often continue working beyond the store’s 7 p.m. weekday closing time to fill every last prescription, not to mention the fact that Harbor Apothecary is also open on Sundays.

“The customer always comes first. Profits are a priority in every business, but in my business, my customers are my top priority. I instill that in my employees. This is a family run business. My wife and my niece work here. I have two other employees and they’re both going to pharmacy school,” he concluded.