Pharmacy Location: How to Choose a Site That Pays for Itself

A pharmacy location decides more of your first year than almost any other choice. A good one brings steady prescriptions and walk-in sales. A poor one leaves you paying rent for a shop that nobody passes, or worse, a unit the regulator will not license. Most guides start with footfall. We start with the law, because a site that fails a distance or size rule is worth nothing, however busy the street.

This guide gives you seven checks in the order to run them. We use only rules we could confirm from a regulator or a named source, and we say plainly where no reliable benchmark exists. Footfall and clinic proximity are the clearest gaps, so we give you a counting method in place of a made-up number.

Why pharmacy location decides your first year

A new pharmacy has no loyal patients. Its first customers come from whoever is nearby: people leaving a clinic, residents of the next few streets and passers-by who need something now. That makes the site the main source of early sales, and it cannot be fixed later without moving.

The cost of a wrong choice is also unusually high. The licence is tied to the premises, so a move means a new application, a new inspection and a gap in trading. Fit-out money is lost. A day spent on checks before you sign is cheap by comparison. Treat every pharmacy location on your list as a licence risk first and a sales opportunity second.

Check 1: the legal distance rule

Some regulators set a minimum distance between pharmacies, and others do not. Ask first, because an approval that fails this rule cannot be fixed with a better design. The table lists what we could confirm.

For Pakistan and India we found no distance rule in the sources we could read. That does not mean none exists. Ask the regulator, and ask how the distance is measured, since a straight line and a walking route can differ by hundreds of metres.

Check 2: size and ceiling height

Minimum sizes are easier to find than distance rules, and they are strict. A unit that is a few square metres too small cannot be approved. Measure it yourself, since an agent's listing may include walls, stairs or shared areas that the regulator excludes.

Kenya publishes standards in a separate document that we could not read. One agent source gives a small dispensary size, but it is secondary and we do not rely on it. Ask the Pharmacy and Poisons Board for the current premises standard in writing.

Check 3: floor, access and building rules

Ghana's guidelines ask for a customer area, a dispensary, an office and a counselling area inside the unit, and Uganda's pharmacy standards ask for burglar-proofing and controlled access. These rules affect which buildings you can consider at all, and they affect your costs. A first-floor unit above a busy road may look cheap, but it can fail the floor rule before you open.

Also look at the building itself. Check that the landlord permits a pharmacy, that the lease runs at least as long as the regulator needs (Islamabad asks for two years), and that the unit can take extra electrical load for cooling and fridges. Ask for these confirmations in writing before you pay a deposit.

Check 4: real footfall, counted not guessed

We found no reputable, quantified benchmark for how much footfall a pharmacy needs. Blog posts that quote a number rarely cite a source, so we do not repeat them. Count instead.

Stand near the unit for several short sessions across different days and hours. Use a tally sheet. Count people who pass, people who enter shops of any kind and people who enter existing pharmacies, if any. Include a weekday morning, a weekday evening and a weekend afternoon. If the street is quiet at one of those times, note it.

Compare the counts across your shortlist. The aim is not a precise forecast. It is to see which site is clearly busier, and at which times.

How to run a footfall count

A count is only useful if you run it the same way at every site. Use fifteen-minute sessions, repeat them at three times of day, and record the same four numbers each time. The table below is a blank sheet you can copy.

Fifteen minutes is a sample, not a total, so do not multiply it into a forecast. Use it only to compare one pharmacy location with another. If a site looks promising, repeat the count on a second day before you commit.

Check 5: nearby clinics and prescribers

Prescriptions bring regular patients, so nearby clinics matter. Again, we found no verified rule of thumb for distance or volume. Gather your own facts by visiting clinics and doctors within walking distance.

• How many doctors work there, and in which specialities?
• Roughly how many patients a day, and how many leave with a prescription?
• Does the clinic have its own pharmacy or dispensing arrangement?
• Are there other pharmacies within sight of the entrance?
• Which pharmacy do the doctors and patients say they already use?

Be careful about any offer from a doctor to send patients to you in return for a favour. Many regulators forbid such arrangements, so take legal advice before agreeing to anything.

Check 6: competition and market density

Count competitors within five minutes' walk and note what they offer. Then compare with the national picture, which is patchy and often old. Uganda's National Drug Authority said in 2018 that the country had 1,734 pharmacies and over 10,000 drug shops, with 739 of the pharmacies in Kampala. Kenya's Pharmacy and Poisons Board reported 10,497 registered pharmaceutical premises by June 2026, but that includes wholesalers.

In Bangladesh a Daily Star editorial put the listed pharmacies at about 217,000, although roughly 80% of them had expired registrations. In Nepal a 2018 report counted 21,000 registered pharmacies and over 5,000 more operating without registration. A 2018 paper counted 3,768 registered community pharmacies in Nigeria. National numbers hide local reality, so your own street count matters more.

Check 7: storage, power and cooling at the unit

Your stock must stay inside strict temperature limits. WHO guidance sets 15 to 25 C for controlled room temperature, 8 to 15 C for a cool place, and 2 to 8 C for a fridge, with dry storage at no more than 60% relative humidity. Tanzania's rules ask for temperature kept below 25 C in a community pharmacy, and Ghana's controlled drug guideline asks for a locked metal cabinet.

In a hot climate that means air conditioning that works all day, and an electrical supply that can bear it. Ask the landlord about the power rating, whether there is a generator or backup supply, and whether outdoor units are allowed. Poor cooling is a cost you pay every month, so put it in the rent comparison for each pharmacy location.

Rent arithmetic: how much sales does the rent need?

Rent is a fixed cost, so every unit of rent has to be covered by gross profit. The table uses invented numbers to show the method. Assume a 15% gross margin, which matches the Pakistan pricing rule, and use your own margin when you do this.

Rent is divided by the gross margin to find the sales that cover it. A unit that costs PKR 30,000 more each month needs about PKR 200,000 more in monthly sales, before any other cost. Use this to test whether a prime street justifies its price.

Questions to ask the landlord before you commit

The lease is where a good pharmacy location can turn bad. Put these questions to the landlord or agent in writing, and keep the answers with your licence papers.

• Does the lease allow use as a pharmacy, and is that written into the contract?
• How long is the term, and does it meet the regulator's minimum?
• What is the rent review rule, and when can the rent rise?
• Who pays for service charges, power and water, and how are they billed?
• May I install signage, extra air conditioning and a fridge with backup power?
• If the regulator rejects the unit, can I leave without losing the whole deposit?

The last question is the most valuable. If the landlord will not agree to a refund when the licence fails, you carry the whole risk. Try to make the lease conditional on approval, or pay the deposit in stages.

Reading the street: what to look for on site

Numbers tell you part of the story. A walk around the area tells you the rest. Spend an hour on foot and note the following for each pharmacy location on your shortlist.

• Visibility: can people see the shopfront from the main road and from both directions?
• Access: is there a safe crossing, a pavement and a ramp for people with limited mobility?
• Parking and drop-off: can a patient stop briefly without blocking traffic?
• Neighbours: are there clinics, banks, markets, schools or bus stops that bring regular traffic?
• Lighting and safety after dark, which matters for evening trade

Take photos from the street at different times. They help you compare sites later, and they help a partner or investor who has not visited.

Common mistakes when picking a pharmacy location

The same few errors appear again and again. Avoid them and you are ahead of many owners.

The first is choosing on rent alone. A cheap unit with no passing trade is the most expensive option. The second is trusting a verbal promise about a distance or size rule. Only the regulator can confirm it. The third is ignoring cooling and power, which can add real monthly cost. The fourth is signing before the pharmacist agrees to work at that address. The fifth is copying a competitor's site without checking whether the street can support two pharmacies.

If you remember one rule, make it this: no signature until the regulator has confirmed the unit in writing.

A scorecard for comparing sites

Use pass or fail for the legal checks, then score the rest. Any failure on distance, size or floor removes the site. Score the remaining items from one to five and add them up.

Planning for a second branch

If you plan to grow, think about how branches will share stock. A system that supports central inventory and transfers between branches saves money, because slow stock in one shop can supply another. Synapse supports multi-branch inventory with transfers, and you can start free and see it live before you decide. You can also read our guide to multi-branch pharmacy inventory. Expiry risk is also lower when stock can move, as shown in our playbook on reducing expired stock.

Once you have a shortlist, confirm the licence route in our guide to pharmacy licence requirements. For the full launch plan, see how to open a pharmacy. Storage standards are published by WHO.