Two of the most common questions I get about my discontinuing of selling sugary beverages in September of 2014 is A) Did I notice a drop in income because of the lost sales of this line and B) Did I notice an increase in sales because of this move.

Before I stopped selling this line I would see perhaps $1000 on a good month in sales of these products. I don’t have a number of the extra sales made when customers came in to buy pop, juice, vitamin water, chocolate milk, or iced tea. This might be picked up by measuring a drop in sales beyond the regular amount of these beverages sold. Since there really wasn’t a drop in sales though, it is difficult to tell if these ancillary sales dropped or not.

One thing is for sure, the unexpected volume of free advertising it gave the store more than made up for anything lost on pop or any other extra product not being purchased with it. It elevated the reputation of the store to a destination where customers knew we were willing to try something bold to further their health, even if it meant less revenue.

One great offshoot of this event was the introduction it brought us to a key Canadian researcher, Leia Minaker at the University of Waterloo’s Propel Centre for Population Health Impact. She took notice of the activity in Baddeck and started a natural study to determine the effect this had in the selling of pop in Baddeck after that day in September. She collected sales data not only from us but from the two other major sellers in the Village and determined that there was no switching behavior in purchasing to these other outlets. The study was published in BMC Public Health in 2016. (Minaker LM, Olstad DL, MacKenzie G, et al. An evaluation of the impact of a restrictive retail food environment intervention in a rural community pharmacy setting. BMC Public Health. 2016;16:586. doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3281-9).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947263/

Another great find for me was Dr Yoni Freedhoff, one of this country’s most prominent voices not only on unhealthy marketing practices to everyone (especially children) but also on the larger topic of obesity.

After two and a half years I look back on this move as the best one I could have done for my Pharmacy. When I think of the doubt I had in the months or weeks leading up to this I now realize the worry was for nothing. In this day and age, we try to rock the boat as little as possible in our pharmacy models for fear of going out of business. I can assure you if by some stretch your pharmacy would close based on the lost sales of sugary beverages, then maybe you should be in a convenience store type of setting instead. If you know for a fact that the small amount of profit made on this loss leader (if any at all) won’t affect your store adversely, and you realize the huge price tag that the consumption of these beverages costs your country long term, what is the holdback in removing them from your business? After all, shouldn’t we be partly responsible for this cost to the healthcare system by continuing to sell liquid calories and in effect promoting them? When asked about other snack foods, which we have overhauled as well at Stone’s, my response is that this is my contribution to educating the public on one of the most common sources of extra calorie consumption starting with children and moving right on up to older adults. If you own a pharmacy, make a mark by taking your own stand on something that you know is causing harm to your patients. You’ll feel better for it and so will your business.