‘The Olympics of truck driving’
ENT & Allergy Associates opening new clinic in Stevens Point
February 23, 2026
LITTLE CHUTE – Owner-pharmacist Nic Smith said the Smith Pharmacy team is settling into its brand-new facility at 1914 Freedom Road – less than a mile from where it was founded nearly 15 years ago.
Beginning his career as a corporate pharmacist in 2004, Nic said he decided to step out on his own and opened Smith Pharmacy at 1800 Freedom Road in Little Chute in 2013.
“It gave me a great opportunity to learn and network…, [but] it’s just a different business,” he said. “I got frustrated with the corporate red tape.”
Though appreciative of his experience managing corporate-owned pharmacies, Nic said seeing the impact of an independent pharmacy firsthand inspired him to pursue it.
“I just couldn’t believe the difference it can make as far as being able to get drugs in, availability, being able to get drugs in on short notice, pricing – on and on,” he said.
Roughly four or five years ago, Nic said Smith Pharmacy began to grow out of their first home on Freedom Road – prompting the purchase and subsequent demolition of an “abandoned car wash” down the street.
“We tore that down and put [up] the new pharmacy,” he said. “The move was tough because we were open until 7 p.m. on a Friday and then we closed on a Saturday, which was the first time we ever did that not [on] a holiday. Then we had to be ready to go on Monday morning at 9.”
Nic said the transition involved moving not only Smith Pharmacy’s existing inventory to the new location, but all its infrastructure as well.
“We had to move, literally, 50 computers; thousands and thousands of drugs; and get all the IT infrastructure set up and working,” he said.
Celebrating the grand opening of Smith Pharmacy’s new facility last month, Nic said the difficult changeover was achieved with the help of his dedicated staff and their families.
“We had some glitches the first week, but overall we grinded through it,” he said. “We had like 60 people helping us – all of our employees and some of their spouses were here… [We were] fortunate to have a lot of nice people who helped us.”
As a Freedom native and current resident, Nic said he’s grateful for the opportunity to serve his adjacent hometown community and for their returned support – helping Smith Pharmacy to not only survive, but thrive over the last 15 years.
An achievement, he said, not easily attained in his industry.
“I can see why more than half of independent pharmacies fail – it is ruthless out there,” he said. “To start, it is very, very tough. I worked more than 100 hours a week, every single week, for the first three years.”
Nic said one of the most difficult hurdles independent pharmacies have to overcome is building and responsibly maintaining their inventory.
“The hardest thing of all is when you start and your volume isn’t high, you get a medication that costs $5,000…, then you sell a prescription for 30 pills and you make a $10 profit on it,” he said. “In the beginning, everything [we] could possibly make just got stuck into more inventory… and you have to watch it like a hawk so it doesn’t outdate and expire. It is tough.”
However, Nic said if a pharmacy survives past its initial years in operation – a big “if” – the flow of inventory begins to even out.
“Finally, you get to a point where you fill 200 prescriptions a day, the inventory starts to flatten out a little bit and you finally get over the hump, but that took [us] a couple of years,” he said. “It was a couple of years of literally working 100-hour weeks every week and losing money. We lost money our first three years.”
Determination, Nic said, is what kept Smith Pharmacy going in difficult moments – leading him and his team through the years and, now, to their “state-of-the-art” facility.
“I’m stubborn, and I knew it would go,” he said. “Little Chute is really a perfect location.”
‘Getting better every week’
Having previously remodeled their space at 1800 Freedom Road several times, Nic said Smith Pharmacy’s new building marks the fourth time in 11 years it has upgraded its facility.
“In the beginning, we rented 1,500 square feet, and after about three or four years, we actually bought the building… on a land contract,” he said. “We moved into 3,000 square feet on the end [of that building], then we expanded to 6,000 [square feet before] we expanded again. Then we moved over here [to 1914 Freedom Road].”
With the opportunity to build from the ground up, Nic said there were certain improvements and amenities he wanted to introduce to Smith Pharmacy’s new facility.
“I wanted the atrium [to be] welcoming and something unique,” he said. “I always thought [about] Lambeau Field – you walk in the atrium, it’s got that really cool, welcoming [feeling with the] sunshine coming in. So, I wanted something like that.”
Nic said the new atrium was essentially the only upgrade that was “purely aesthetic.”
“Everything else was pretty much functional,” he said.
Some of Smith Pharmacy’s more functional upgrades, Nic said, include its new clinic room to ease patient traffic during the busy vaccination season, as well as two automated prescription-filling robots.
“[Those] fill about 60% of our prescriptions,” he said. “It’s all barcode technology, they’re 100% accurate and are really, really nice.”
New work stations, lounge and office areas, Nic said, also give Smith Pharmacy’s team a bit more space to operate as compared to their previous facility.
“We were busting at the seams,” he said. “We did everything we could at the old place. Now, it’s nice to have space, and we actually have extra space if we grow.”
Though their first week open didn’t go according to plan – “it was a nightmare because we had IT issues” – Nic said he and his team are now getting into the swing of things at the new space.
“It didn’t start off quite as smoothly as I was hoping, but it’s definitely getting better every week,” he said.
Unique services
Employing “14 pharmacists, two nurses and 112 employees,” Nic said Smith Pharmacy is intentionally staffed “really heavy” to ensure a quality customer experience.
“When you walk in as a customer, there are, literally, seven pharmacists within 50 feet of you when you’re getting your prescription,” he said. “Then we have long-term care pharmacists and compounding pharmacists upstairs. So, a lot of times there’s 10 pharmacists in the building.”
Compounding pharmacists, Nic said, play an important role in one of Smith Pharmacy’s more unique services.
“There are a lot of [medications] that are just grossly overpriced, [but] we could work with the doctor and make a compound that’s equivalent to it [and] save the patient a couple hundred dollars,” he said. “The patient’s happy and the doctor’s happy [because they didn’t have to] do a bunch of paperwork for a prior authorization… It saves the whole healthcare system money.”
In terms of over-the-counter medications and supplements, Nic said he and his team complete the necessary due diligence to ensure they’re effective and safe.
“[For example], when CBD came out, I did a ton of homework on it, tons of research,” he said. “I believe we were the first pharmacy in the state to offer CBD. That was a big gray area. A lot of people were scared of it, [but] I did my research, I was confident with it, did a lot of talks with doctors and it works really well for a lot of people.”
If requested, Nic said Smith Pharmacy can also research and test patients’ supplements and medications.
“Because of our compounding business, we send stuff in for testing all the time,” he said. “So, we can test it to make sure it’s legal, it has in it what it says it has in it, it doesn’t have metals or pesticides in it, [etc.] – we do a lot of little things that people don’t realize.”
Thinking outside the box
Despite being one of the “busiest and highest volume” independent pharmacies in the country, Nic said Smith Pharmacy rarely rests on its laurels.
“I’m always just trying to make things better, but it is pretty cool,” he said. “You hear all these horror stories of pharmacies closing, and it’s not good for anybody… We don’t bash other pharmacies, [because] we’re all in this together [fighting] in the same battles… There’s plenty of business to go around.”
In addition to Smith Pharmacy’s patient services, Nic said he often engages with other healthcare professionals in an attempt to make care more accessible and affordable – resulting in a trusted community partnership among local providers.
“We always have our ear close to the ground, listening for opportunities to help our patients, finding a way to help them save money, afford their meds or make something better – that’s what we really focus on,” he said. “I do a lot of talks with doctors’ offices and health systems to try to pass some of the things I’ve learned to them, too, so they can help their patients, and that tends to gain [us] a lot of trust.”
Nic said Smith Pharmacy is dedicated to serving its community and is able to react quickly to residents’ needs as an independent practice.
“We don’t have to go through shareholders – there are no shareholders, there are no private investors – it’s literally just me and my wife,” he said. “So, we can make changes real quick.”
That flexibility, Nic said, allows Smith Pharmacy to continually provide not only creative solutions to the health concerns of its patients, but a welcoming environment curated by its local owners.
“We’re always looking at ways to improve, but I guess that’s one thing we do differently,” he said. “We try to think outside the box.”
For more information, visit smithpharmacyrx.com.
