You might often joke about opening your own business with your friends or work colleagues, but three former pharmacy workers have made that happen after over a decade in community pharmacy together.

Former pharmacy technician Lindsay Copley, 32, worked between two Day Lewis pharmacies in Grimsby and Cleethorpes, North East Lincolnshire, for 13 years until last year.

She worked in the pharmacy from the age of 16, starting as a counter assistant and then as a dispenser, but she also set up her own cleaning business alongside her pharmacy jobs.

Read more: ‘Dexter meets Breaking Bad’ in pharmacist’s crime novel ‘The Chemist'

“Amy, Claire, and I always used to say ‘we’ll set up our own little café’,” she tells C+D. But after her son had open-heart surgery, it made Copley want to seize opportunities in life where possible.

“It just made me think to go for it. The worst you can do is that it doesn’t work out. What I went through with my boy last year, I think just give it a go. I don’t think anyone should be unhappy in their job.”

Read more: McPharmacist: From the MPharm to ‘Hamburgerology’

Copley discussed taking over the Meridian Café’s lease after it had been shut for six years, and by June it was hers.

“I rang Amy and Claire and said ‘you know we were on about a café, how serious were you?’ So, they said they were in.

“All of our families helped getting it to look nice and clean. We opened in time for Armed Forces weekend in Cleethorpes last summer. We threw ourselves in the deep end.”

Bacon buns

The café is a short walk from Cleethorpes seafront, next to a few shops, a showground, campsite, and not far from a holiday park. But just like working for an independent pharmacy, Copley has to fight off local competition and chains such as Starbucks to attract customers.

“From January it was quiet, but now it’s started to pick up as the weather has picked up. I was guilty of it before I opened here, but educating people about how supporting local is so much better. I know how much effort goes into it.”

Copley says it feels easier running the café than a pharmacy as you “only have to deal with what’s in front of you”.

Read more: ‘Everyone’s got a story’: meet the pharmacist who became a filmmaker

“In pharmacy, you’re dealing with the doctor’s surgeries, different clinicians all over the place. And not everything is always communicated down the line.

“Pharmacy changed massively with more responsibility on the pharmacy. GPs passed on a lot more to pharmacies like flu jabs because they were overwhelmed."

She jokes it’s easier for the café’s customers to choose an alternative if they run out of any cakes rather than being on the end of angry patients in a pharmacy. “Patients didn’t understand when there were short supplies. You feel their frustration.”

Read more: Pharmacy to Pokemon: ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen next!’

Copley misses the staff she worked with but adds “I brought them all here! We were such a close bunch. The women taught me a lot, not just in work but life. I’m 32, Amy is 42, and Claire is 52, so we’re not close in age but always been close.”

She suggests that pharmacies could have coffee shops inside them and for patients to “have a bacon bun while you’re waiting”, but her own plans are rooted firmly in making the café successful.

“Long-term plan would be getting it all freshened up, but keeping it a nice, community space for locals and visitors, and maybe get an alcohol licence one day.”

Read more: ‘A lot of transferable skills...’ Pharmacist enters The Apprentice

C+D spoke to a pharmacist turned McDonald’s franchisee who explained why swapping community pharmacy for fast food restaurant leadership is a great way for pharmacists to use their “elite” skills.

And C+D interviewed pharmacist and writer A. A. Dhand about his inspiration for his new novel ‘The Chemist’.