A pharmacy student’s schedule often involves early mornings preparing for exams, afternoons spent in lecture halls and skills labs, evenings volunteering with student and community organizations and late nights full of homework assignments and studying. Imagine adding to this jam-packed agenda one more, colossal task: opening an independent pharmacy.
For Max McDaniel and Kyle Davis, two 2021 Pharm.D. graduates of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, balancing their final year of studies with building a brand-new pharmacy was a tall order, but they pushed through any hurdles with a shared commitment to creating a modern and accessible pharmacy that offers personalized solutions for patients. With these aims, Jacksonville’s East Coast Compounding & Pharmacy was born.
When McDaniel was a pharmacy student, he worked for an independent compounding pharmacy. During McDaniel’s final year of school, the pharmacy’s owner passed away, and McDaniel approached the owner’s wife to offer his help with navigating pharmacy operations while she figured out next steps. She agreed, and McDaniel enlisted his friend and classmate Davis to co-manage the business. When external factors caused the pharmacy to shutter its doors, McDaniel and Davis decided they would build something new, all on their own.
“We managed to open East Coast Compounding right around the time that the other pharmacy was closing, and we benefited from some of those patients choosing to continue to do business with us. Our goal in opening East Coast Compounding & Pharmacy was to bring independent pharmacy into more of a modern era, which is why we built a state-of-the-art lab and kept a modern feel throughout,” McDaniel said.
Thanks to flexibility granted by their College of Pharmacy preceptors and construction contractors alike, McDaniel and Davis began building out the space, located in Jacksonville’s San Marco neighborhood, during their final year of school. After months of after-hours site visits and dinners eaten in the construction zone, East Coast Compounding & Pharmacy opened its doors in January 2021. McDaniel remembers this era as hectic yet exhilarating.
“When starting any business, there are going to be a lot of late nights, and there were many times when we didn’t think things were going to work out, but with a little luck and hard work, we were able to finally get to the finish line,” McDaniel recalled. “Now, when I look back, I think of those memories as the fondest. The grind of building something from the ground up is something I will always be proud of.”
McDaniel and Davis built East Coast Compounding with an eye for innovative strategies and individualized patient care. In emulating Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs company, East Coast Compounding offers generic drugs at lower prices by removing pharmacy benefit managers and other insurance company representatives from their business practices. McDaniel said 90% of their business comes from drug compounds produced in-house, with the remaining 10% coming from retail prescriptions.
“We want to offer affordable maintenance medication to folks who are willing to pay out of pocket, and in return, we’re able to offer a much better and quicker service than big box stores,” McDaniel explained. “As for the compounding side, we make a variety of products from sterile injections to hormone creams to oral capsules and anything in between. Our goal is to offer custom medications tailored to each patient’s unique needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.”
At East Coast Compounding, transparency is paramount, Davis said, and all employees aim to build a rapport of trust and confidence with their customers — even the technicians who would normally work behind the scenes at other pharmacies.
“In the past, compounding was done on the back counter, hidden away from view in the back of the pharmacy. We placed our lab directly at the forefront of the pharmacy for all to see, with a viewing window for patients to watch,” Davis said. “We hoped this would give patients a better understanding of what compounding was and give the compounders a sense of accountability to the patients they’re serving.”
McDaniel and Davis count among their ranks several UF pharmacy students, who gain valuable insights during their studies working as interns for East Coast Compounding. McDaniel said it’s important to provide skills training opportunities for their fellow Gator pharmacists.
“The future of pharmacy lies within the new minds that come through the program each year,” he said. “We try to keep an intern from each year of pharmacy school on our team, so they’re able to teach each other and rotate through year after year. Both Kyle and I had great preceptors while in school, and we think that it’s very important to do what was done for us and help these students succeed and get new experiences.”
Working with UF pharmacy students gives Davis the opportunity to reflect on his journey to independent pharmacy ownership and impart some key lessons that he believes every student should hear long before graduation.
“You don’t have to feel ready to be capable. Confidence is built by doing the things that scare you before you feel qualified to do them,” Davis said. “You can’t fall prisoner to impostor syndrome.”
Four years in business have come with their share of challenges and learning opportunities, but there’s one phenomenon that occurs each day at East Coast Compounding that reminds Davis and McDaniel why they chose this career path: positive interactions with patients.
“Every time a patient thanks us after getting a compounded medication that they couldn’t get elsewhere and explains how it has impacted their life in a positive way, it reminds us why compounding exists in the pharmacy world,” Davis said. “The stories that we hear from patients show us that we’re making medicine more personal, more accessible and more powerful for the people who need it most.”