Schaeper Pharmacy: Past, Present and Bright Future

Third-year pharmacy student Tyler Schaeper is training at the University of Cincinnati to be a 21st Century pharmacist and is looking forward to bringing his modern skill set, learned at UC’s James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy, to his family’s independent pharmacy, Schaeper’s Pharmacy, serving Cincinnati’s Northside neighborhood at the corner of Hamilton and Chase avenues since the turn of the 20th Century.

"I’ve been around it since I was born. I’m 23 now and my grandfather bought it 30 years ago. It’s just always been in my life. There are still a few people who come in who came in when my grandfather was here,” says  Tyler, whose father, Rick Schaeper (85'), and grandfather, Jerry Schaeper (57'), both UC pharmacy alum, bought the business in 1985.

The Schaepers started with two locations: Jerry Schaeper originally worked at a former Kings Run Drive pharmacy in Spring Grove Village and Rick Schaeper worked at the Northside store. 

"It’s been a pharmacy since 1901. The guy we bought it from had been here 40 years and the guy before him was here 40 years,” says Rick, who became the sole owner in 1997 after his father passed away shortly after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

Of Rick Schaeper’s three children, Eric, Katelyn, and Tyler, with wife, Laura, Tyler took to the idea of becoming a pharmacist when he was a junior in high school and worked at the family pharmacy after school and summers as a pharmacy technician.

"I worked behind the counter and did a little patient counseling too. I really enjoy when someone comes through the door. You get to talk about family and make it a little more personal.”

And Tyler isn’t the only intern to experience what it’s like to work at an independent, family pharmacy.  Rick Schaeper has been a preceptor for over twenty-five years, providing Winkle College of Pharmacy students with experiential learning opportunities and internships.

In many ways, Schaeper’s is a flashback to simpler times, with a few sundry items such as cough drops and Kleenex on limited shelf space.

"It’s more of an apothecary. Ninety-five percent of my business has been selling prescriptions as opposed to selling garden hoses,” Rick says of the historic brick and mortar storefront where he employees two full time pharmacists, two part time pharmacists and three pharmacy technicians.

Although the Schapers have been able to derive a respectable income over the years, Rick says that changes in prescription pricing and coverage have make it more and more difficult for independent pharmacies to survive.

"We kind of have all of our eggs in one basket, and we’ve decided we need a bigger basket.”

That’s where Tyler comes in:

"Independent pharmacies are moving in different directions now and we need to move in a different direction,” says the soon to be PharmD, explaining that 21st Century pharmacy has a greater degree of patient care involved in the profession such as with medication therapy management for diabetes patients and the administration of vaccines.

The one thing that won’t change, he says, is the family friendly atmosphere that patrons have come to rely on in an age when there are so many other retail choices available.

"We make the medication process as smooth as we can on them so that they can deal with the other stresses that they have.”