Behind the counter: Charles Michie’s Pharmacy, Aberdeen

The role of a pharmacy has changed a lot over the course of the profession’s existence. Long gone is making medicines, the focus has shifted to dispensing and clinical services.

But for John Michie, one of the two brother owners of the small Aberdeen chain Charles Michie’s Pharmacy, he remembers how pharmacies sold cigarettes and alcohol, with even plants, books and computer games finding a place in his pharmacies.

With his brother Charles Michie, they took over the pharmacy business from their father, also Charles Michie (Snr), in 1963 and have grown it from two to seven branches since.

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At their flagship pharmacy at 391 Union Street in Aberdeen, a former Chivas Brothers whisky headquarters they moved into in 1982, a continuation of the varied products on sale is a spectacle for the pharmacy sector.

The pharmacy, known as Michies, is almost a department store, with it split between three levels. The top floor where you enter is the pharmacy, much more like the size of a multiple than you’d expect of an independent chain.

The next two levels are of similar size. The lower-level is home to a vast gift shop selling Scottish soaps and biscuits, toys, jewellery and other souvenirs. Then the basement is fitted with a café, with a pharmacy exhibition covering its walls.

The Granite Mile

Michies Pharmacy feels like an institution of Aberdeen. While Charles Snr originally opened his first pharmacy in 1921 on nearby Crown Street, the family business doesn’t quite have the longevity of Aberdeen’s key fishing, shipbuilding, papermaking and textile industries.

But it’s been around longer than the city’s oil industry which started to boom in the 1970s, before a decline in the last decade has seen a shift to Aberdeen refocusing as a renewable energy capital.

It’s had a presence on Union Street, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, since 1935 after Charles Snr bought a premises at number 231 and added another at number 471, all close to the city’s grand Music Hall venue.

The street is known as the Granite Mile, in reference to another key industry exporting the material, and is the main shopping area for the city just around the corner from the busy port.

Family

John knows the business’s history is an attraction for the pharmacy, gift shop and café to work together. Visit Aberdeenshire even promote Michies on its website and calls it a “stalwart of the community”.

But despite operating several branches, his father Charles Snr did not encourage his sons to go into pharmacy at first, even though both had their first jobs working in the photo lab on Saturdays.

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By the time their father passed away in 1963, John was studying to be an accountant, and Charles aspired to be a veterinary surgeon.

After deciding to carry on with the family’s pharmacy business that their father had left, Charles was the son who decided to train as a pharmacist himself to help with the takeover. He still works today as a pharmacist, helping to cover a lot of the lunch breaks.

Outside their own family in the business, the pharmacies have been sustained by a dedicated and reliable staff who have kept the family feel at its core.

“Because it’s a family-owned business, it feels you’re an extension of the family,” Michies Pharmacy’s superintendent pharmacist Matthew Hamilton tells C+D. “Where else can you get that these days?

“They’ve had staff that have been here for a very long time and are very loyal.”

Loyalty

Born and bred in Aberdeen, Hamilton started at Michies aged 19 with a Saturday job as he started studying for the MPharm at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University.

“I got a job in our Rosemount branch and didn’t leave. I started on the counter, then the dispensary, essentially learning the trade.”

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Hamilton completed his pre-reg year at the Union Street pharmacy and then replaced a pharmacist who retired just as he finished.

He’s currently the Laurencekirk branch’s pharmacy manager and also is an NHS Grampian teach & treat hub lead to help pharmacists learn how to run a service and get feedback on their skillset.

But a few years ago, he became the superintendent pharmacist for all seven of Michies pharmacies after Charles, the previous superintendent, and John asked him to “take over that side of things”.

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Having been at Michies all his career since 2009, his story is far from unusual as many staff members have stayed for most of their careers in the family-owned business.

The Union Street pharmacist and pharmacy manager Dawn Bagnall has been with Michies for 30 years, having started out doing work experience aged 13.

“We don’t have a corporate pressure like you would have elsewhere,” Hamilton explains. “It’s about people and that’s the drive that comes from the top. John and Charles are very much about serving the community.”

Branches

Hamilton explains each of the seven branches are “specific to the communities they’re in” and what’s required of them to run well.

The Stonehaven branch, for example, is the only one that does needle exchange, but also has a gift department like the Union Street branch. While the Portlethen branch, the only one in a GP practice, has a dispensing robot to manage the 12,000 items dispensed on average per month.

But there’s a consistency in the model too. There’s been investment into a PMR system that has helped increase efficiency. This has reduced the time spent in the dispensaries, Hamilton says they have increased the number of pharmacy technicians running then now.

He adds that nearly all their pharmacists are independent prescribers too as “we want to push people into it – it’s the future”.

Café culture

But the Union Street branch is the only one that has a café in it. This attracts the older generations, partly what Hamilton amounts to as coming with the “tradition” of the business as “a lot of customers and patients have been coming here their whole lives”.

There are also tourists who come too. One of the gift shop staff members displays a calendar behind the till where dates are marked when the cruise ships are coming into Aberdeen, a reminder to upsell the Scottish-themed gifts.

“We see everybody,” says Hamilton. “It’s not about the look of your premises, it’s about knowing the professionalism and the people you’re going to see.”

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But Michies isn’t relying on being embedded in the community just from its legacy.

Yes, the café sells your usual coffee, cake, homemade sandwiches and soups – Hamilton’s favourite is the coronation chicken sandwich and the potato double Gloucester soup – but it’s using the café as an events space to bring people back to the high street.

The space can fit up to 45 people seated, and it’s running an arts and heritage programme with the aim of improving the community’s mental health and wellbeing.

“We sponsor people to give talks because the folklore and history of Aberdeen is immense,” John Michie says. When the Tall Ships Race came to Aberdeen in July, the pharmacy put on a sea shanty workshop to celebrate the sailing event.

It’s been so popular that the workshop is returning later in September, and it’s been one of many free workshops and ‘Aberdeen Talks’ programmed more regularly over the last year. The latter sees architects, authors and local history researchers speak about city’s heritage, helping the café to become a new, third space for the community.

It has also worked with nearby Mental Health Aberdeen a few doors down on Union Street to offer a its café for people to come and ‘Blether Together’, an initiative aimed at tackling loneliness and social isolation.

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“The talk series was a clever idea,” Hamilton says. “Our city centre, we’re quick to say it’s suffering, declining.

“How about doing something to be a reason to come to the city centre? It’s about making the city centre attractive again.

“It’s about attracting people in for a discussion, reminding people we’re more than just a pharmacy. We end up making a little bit from people buying things, but it’s more about community and bringing people together than it is about driving business.”

Services

But even within the Union Street pharmacy’s specific operations, it tells a story slightly different to your average community pharmacy.

Michies’ private, travel health clinic is a key reason people come into the city centre. But this is a pharmacist and nurse-led service, and both lead on this for the seasonal flu vaccinations too.

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“Nurses aren’t traditionally employed by pharmacies, but we do,” he add. “You see the benefit of having a multidisciplinary team.”

The pharmacy even does moles screening, as it will take photographs to send to a dermatologist who will then proceed with necessary treatment if needed.

Alongside two consultation rooms, plus an area for passport photo services, the Union Street pharmacy employs a foot healthcare practitioner who sees around 15 patients a day.

“It’s a practitioner who is there for just minor complications. There are so many people who need assistance in that area.”

Hamilton used to offer weight loss services at Michies with Saxenda but he says “ethically it felt wrong” to continue with the service as it caused medicine shortages with diabetes patients.

“Until I had a guarantee that we weren’t affecting the diabetic market, it felt wholly uncomfortable. We didn’t have weekly jabs, it was daily.

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“We implemented the service because of customer demand; it wasn’t something I was necessarily going to do.”

But Michies started the services again after seeing how online pharmacies were approaching the weight loss market and proliferation of Mounjaro, Ozempic and Wegovy.

“When speaking about the issue of online pharmacies and not seeing somebody, it felt like this is dangerous. There was an opportunity to create a service focused around the individual,” Hamilton says.

Funding

Despite a diversification of private services along with a steady gift shop and café income, Michies isn’t immune to the pressures of being funded appropriately from Scotland’s community pharmacy funding settlement.

For 2025/26, Scottish pharmacies will receive a global sum of £9.31 million which is a 4% uplift and a rise in guaranteed minimum reimbursement from £110m to £120m.

Community Pharmacy Scottland chief executive Matt Barclay said in July it was “not enough to cover the rising operating costs being faced by the pharmacy network”.

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And Hamilton agrees: “Every possible cost has gone up. How do you give people a pay rise when that doesn’t even cover the National Insurance increase?

“There’s no national strategy. Scottish first minister John Swinney came out and said ‘we’re expanding Pharmacy First in Scotland’. So, where’s the funding? There is no funding.

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“Pharmacy First came and replaced the Minor Ailments Service. The more activity there is, the price goes down. Why would you agree to a contract whereby you are going to be paid less for doing more? It doesn’t make sense.”

Hamilton says he would “love to do more” for the community but thinks without additional funding, it is “disrespectful” to be asked to do more.

Low emission zone

Other challenges faced by Michies include the inevitable medicine shortages which Hamilton says have “become so commonplace it’s boring talking about it now”.

But a public transport gripe has compounded the pharmacy’s footfall. The introduction of low emissions zones (LEZ) in Aberdeen in June 2024 and bus gates to Union Street that blocks off cars has reduced the city centre traffic, but has been bad for business.

“You won’t have to look too far to find how people have a poor opinion of the bus gates,” Hamilton says.

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“The last thing we needed was making people feel we couldn’t drive down anymore, especially as the city does not have very good public transport links into some areas of Aberdeenshire.

“It’s difficult when you pedestrianise the only thoroughfare. You’ve cut off the main artery of the city, this is the heart of Aberdeen. It’s killing business.”

Future

While Hamilton is superintendent for all seven branches, there’s a sense of personal pride that his Laurencekirk branch – along with the Stonehaven one – have achieved an NHS Gold Standard Pharmacy Award in honour of the quality of healthcare services they provide at those pharmacies.

But he admits that Michies, like other community pharmacies, are now “dependent on the NHS” even though some of the services it provides for them has restricted them.

“There’s a large retail element that is gone. Pharmacy First was fantastic and also devastating because it completely destroyed our retail business. The future is going to be somewhere in the middle of NHS and private.

“The question is, at what point does private start to then detract away from paying attention to NHS?”

Exhibition

Changes like this have come and gone over the course of Michies 104-year history. But at the Union Street café’s walls, they have an exhibition on its walls to provide a history of exactly how pharmacy has changed since its first pharmacy was established.

The contents detail everything from the Michies own history – including snippets of them appearing in historic editions of Chemist+Druggist – to cabinet displays detailing the different liquids, powders, poisons and medicines that found their homes in pharmacies over the years.

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“It’s about showcasing what pharmacy was and where it’s going,” Hamilton says. “There’s an original unit from one of the branches from many years ago, and the smells are amazing.”

John Michie says the “public love it” as he and his brother John were interviewed about their experiences to help shape the exhibition’s archival material and pharmaceutical objects such as specie jars and carboys.

There’s also space on one wall for the public to hang their own sketches and artwork depicting what they have spotted in the exhibition.

Kilts

The exhibition is a gentle reminder of how Michies has tried to cater to everyone’s needs throughout its existence.

Right now, Hamilton sums up it perfectly: “Where else can you go get your prescription sorted, go get coffee, go see the foot healthcare practitioner and get your travel jabs while you’re at it?”

Michies’ Union Street store is still diversifying to retain its legacy as a staple of the Aberdeen high street, combining the pharmacy with the gift shop, café, events and exhibition.

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But the legacy has been built from truly serving generations upon generations in the purest community pharmacy spirit.

One instance of going above and beyond detailed in the exhibition even shows the extremes this went to. Charles helped a Shetland woman in the 60s when he was just a trainee by sourcing herbs and spices to create a curry powder for her.

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But the close relationships and care extend to former staff too, as John recalls chatting to a couple while opening the pharmacy one morning recently. They had left Aberdeen for Australia 40 years ago and were back as tourists, but the wife fondly revealed she was one of the pharmacy staff when she was living in Aberdeen.

“She still claims to have a kilt – all our staff used to wear a Scottish tartan style kilt,” John revealed.

“The rapport between our counter staff, pharmacists and the public has been established over many years. We know successive generations because people tend to use the same pharmacy. We spend a lot of time talking to customers, we know them, and we’ve got very loyal staff. We are an old-fashioned, family business.”