It wasn't 'your average drugstore.' Whatever happened to all of the Fay's Drug locations?
Alan Morrell
5 min read
Fay’s Drug was a mostly regional drugstore chain with a large presence in the Rochester area as it grew into one of the largest drugstore chains in the country.
The business was started by a father-and-son team and named after the son’s wife – and intentionally misspelled. Fay’s stores sold a wide variety of goods with a corporate tagline of “Obviously not your average drugstore.”
Its yellow-and-black marketing format attracted the wrath, or at least attention, of Kodak over the company’s film packaging. Fay’s expanded quickly in the Rochester region after it bought the local and long-established Key Drug Co.; the company later opened its own office supply and automotive stores.
Fay’s had a dedicated pool of employees, many of whom still sing its praises.
“It started as a family-owned company and felt the same until the last day,” said Dave LaBarge of Fairport, who managed several Fay’s stores and created a Facebook page dedicated to the company that has more than 600 members.
“They treated people special,” LaBarge added. “They had contests and parties for employees. You knew people by name in the corporate office. It was like working for someone’s family and you were part of the family.”
Henry Panasci founded the company with his son, Henry Jr. Both were graduates of the University at Buffalo’s pharmacy school. Henry Jr. started working in his father’s store at age 7 with tasks like stacking the penny candy.They opened the first Fay’s in Fairmount in suburban Syracuse in 1958. Henry Jr. explained the moniker in a 1998 interview published in UB Today, the University at Buffalo’s online alumni magazine.
“We wanted a name that was short and catchy; we didn’t think ‘Panasci’s Pharmacy’ had much of a ring,” he said. So they instead selected Fay’s, after Henry Jr.’s wife, Faye. The Panascis purposely dropped the “e” to save money on the cost of signs.
A second store that soon followed in nearby Liverpool struggled, Panasci Jr. told UB Today, but the tide was about to turn.
“To solve the problem, we decided to open a third store – more or less go for broke,” he said in the article. “That store was a home run. So was the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh – after that, we just couldn’t miss.” The company went public and sold stock in 1969.
Fay’s entered the Rochester market with a store in Irondequoit’s Georgetown Plaza in 1971, LaBarge said. Outlets followed in ensuing years at Westmar Plaza in Gates, Perinton Square Mall and Southview Commons near Monroe Community College. The company bought 20 or so Key Drug stores in 1979 and converted them to Fay’s.
By then, the company reportedly had 81 stores, all within 150 miles of its Liverpool headquarters and warehouse. Fay’s had briefly expanded to South Carolina and other parts of the Southeast but sold those stores when they were unsuccessful.
Fay’s installed a computerized pharmacy system in 1982. By the mid-80s, Fay’s branched into other ventures, opening Wheels Discount Auto Supply and Paper Cutter stores. The company also tried entering into New England markets, but, like with the failed “Southern strategy,” sold or closed them within a few years.
Expansion continued at a rapid pace. In 1991, Fay’s bought out the 48-store Carls Drug Co., based in Rome, Oneida County. The Fay’s chain by then extended to more than 200 stores.
The company always did a brisk business in film and film processing, LaBarge said. That led to a dustup here with Kodak. Jim Wuest, who was a buyer for Fay’s, posted a Facebook comment about the dispute.
“Kodak threatened to take Fay’s to court because the Fay’s brand film package I developed was too close to the yellow used on their package,” wrote Wuest, who is from Oneida County. “They finally dropped it when we changed our package. But we still took 50 percent of their market share in the major upstate New York markets!”
Fay’s sold products that you wouldn’t find in other drugstores, like lounge chairs and radar detectors and lawnmowers. LaBarge said Fay’s prices on some food items were “ridiculously low” to bring in customers who would buy more merchandise. Stores in Watertown and then Binghamton had full lines of sporting goods and sold everything from rowboats to rifles to archery products, LaBarge said. Fay’s also opened its own liquor store – the only one – in Watertown, next to its drugstore, LaBarge added.
“We sold a ton of motor oil,” LaBarge said. “We had hardware, with a private label of paint. We sold watches and we made keys. We carried more than most drugstores, which is where our tagline came from.”
Big changes came in the mid-1990s. Fay’s decided to concentrate on drugstore operations and sold its Wheels Discount and Paper Cutter stores in 1995. A year later, Fay’s sold its drugstores to J.C. Penney Co., which converted them to Eckerd Drugs stores. The New York Times pegged the number of Fay’s stores at 272.
Panasci Jr. said in the UB Today article that consolidation was sweeping the chain-drugstore business. “In order to effectively compete, you had to be one of the largest,” he said in the story. “We felt the timing to get out was propitious.”
Fay’s was gone forever. Based on Facebook feedback, it won’t be forgotten by those who worked there.
Whatever Happened to …? is a feature about Rochester’s haunts of yesteryear and is based on our archives.
Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.
Editor's note: This story was originally published in April 2016.
