Keith’s Pharmacy, 500 N. Hastings Ave., is shown Friday, Sept. 15. Owners Brent and Patty Gollner closed the business Sept. 12, 2023, after 31 years of serving the community.
Keith’s Pharmacy, 500 N. Hastings Ave., is shown Friday, Sept. 15. Owners Brent and Patty Gollner closed the business Sept. 12, 2023, after 31 years of serving the community.
Keith’s Pharmacy, 500 N. Hastings Ave., is shown Friday, Sept. 15. Owners Brent and Patty Gollner closed the business Sept. 12, 2023, after 31 years of serving the community.
Keith’s Pharmacy closed its doors for the last time Tuesday as longtime owners Brent and Patty Gollner look toward retirement, transferring customers to Walgreens’ pharmacy.
With rising costs and lower reimbursement rates, the business was becoming less sustainable for the Gollners. Patty said Brent was working 65-70 hours a week, and that she sometimes would put in 60 hours herself. Both are licensed pharmacists, able to fill prescriptions for customers.
“We really want to thank our loyal customers,” Brent said. “It takes a village to have a business that’s successful.”
As Brent, 58, and Patty, 57, contemplated an exit strategy as retirement neared, they would have loved to find a young pharmacist looking to purchase the business, as the Gollners had in 1992.
Patty said it’s a tough business to get into now and they didn’t see any prospects on the horizon.
“We would have run ourselves into the ground,” Patty said. “Our hearts said ‘no,’ but our business sense said we had to.”
Walgreens reached out to purchase the pharmacy customer records of the business, and the Gollners saw it as an opportunity.
Patty said they were too young to retire but were afraid that in five years, the opportunity to sell the records wouldn’t exist anymore.
“We didn’t want to lose out on an opportunity that came from our life’s work,” she said. “We wanted to make sure our customers were taken care of.”
To assist in the transition, Brent will be working at the Walgreens pharmacy for 13 months. Electronic prescriptions are being sent to Walgreens automatically.
Phone calls to Keith’s are transferred to Walgreens automatically. Letters are going out to customers to explain the change.
While they would have liked to explain the change to customers in advance, Patty said, part of the deal included not discussing it before Keith’s closed for the final time at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Certified pharmacy technicians at Keith’s have found employment elsewhere. Having had staff with them for decades, Patty said it was difficult to say goodbye to employees who became like family. Some are sticking with the Gollners as they pack up inventory for return.
The closure marks more than four decades of pharmaceutical service to the community.
In 1979, Keith Moul purchased a pharmacy business from Faye Hulsker and changed the name to Keith’s Pharmacy. Under Moul’s watch, the business expanded from a single location at 500 N. Hastings Ave. to a second location in the Hastings Medical Park, 2115 N. Kansas Ave.
Gollner graduated from the Creighton University College of Pharmacy in 1989 and began working for Moul upon returning to Hastings. Patty joined the business after her graduation in 1990.
As Moul looked toward retirement, he approached the Gollners about buying the pharmacy.
“I think they saw promise in us,” Brent said. “He was approaching 55, and it was a good exit strategy.”
Moul continued working with the Gollners as they made payments on the business.
Brent said they would have liked to make a similar change after their 31 years owning the business, but it didn’t pan out that way.
“There’s not a lot of people looking to purchase an existing business now with the desire to work and take less money, but have something of your own,” he said.
The Walgreens offer presented an exit strategy for the Gollners.
With the burden of the business lifted, Patty said, they hope to spend more time with the three grandchildren they have in town.
“We appreciate Hastings and their support,” she said. “They were like family, too.”
