NEW SMYRNA BEACH — David Sikes appraised visitors with bemusement on a recent morning, as they marveled at the vintage lunch counter, antique $1-cent scale, throwback candies and nostalgic trinkets.
“Do you want to take a selfie?” Sikes asked, grinning at how outrageously incongruous the idea seems in the time capsule atmosphere of Little Drug Co., a downtown fixture in New Smyrna Beach since 1920.
“This has been my only real full-time job,” said Sikes, 69, a New Smyrna Beach native who started filling prescriptions for Little’s customers in 1972, fresh out of pharmacy school at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. “I had a job waiting on me. I felt like it was an excellent opportunity, to have a permanent, full-time job in my hometown.”
Now, he’s the owner and pharmacy manager, patriarch of the latest in a long line of family owners.
His son, Justin Sikes, 35, is the store’s chief financial officer, and his daughter, Stacy Smith, handles the company’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. His wife does the bookkeeping and a granddaughter now works part-time behind the lunch counter.
A lot of customers also would qualify as members of the extended family, arriving with their own first-hand accounts of working long-ago part-time summer jobs at the business.
“A lot of people come in here and tell us, ‘I was working here during the 1960s,’” Sikes said.
The ranks of former employees include Lewis "Skip" Barnes, the store’s general manager for 28 years until his retirement in 2007. He still raves about the drugstore as one of the area’s historic gems.
“This town has so much great history to it and we love it,” Barnes said. “When it started there was no Walmart, no big stores. You step back in time when you step into the pharmacy. We have tourists who come and look for it every year. People find it all the time and just love it to pieces.”
The drugstore traces its origin to 1920, when it was the Bush-Little Drug Co., on the eastern end of Canal Street. It became the Little Drug Co. in 1922 when Mrs. Tom Bush sold out to E.M. Little. That same year, it also moved to 501 Canal St., the current home of a Half Wall Beer House.
A new owner, W.K. Sapp, bought the drugstore in 1949 and in 1965 moved Little Drug Co. to its present site, the former Victoria Theater movie house. Sapp’s nephew, Jerry Sapp, took over when his uncle died in 1974, having ascended from summer teenage jobs there to become pharmacist and owner.
David and Justin Sikes bought the store from Sapp in 2013.
“We talked about it for a long time,” said Justin Sikes, 35, who also worked in the store as a teen and majored in microbiology at UCF with the intention of going to pharmacy school. When that didn’t happen, the younger Sikes spent his 20s working in the restaurant business and building custom cabinetry, until the prospect of joining the family business resurfaced.
“I’d grown up in here,” Justin said,” and my dad’s been working here longer than I’ve been around.”
When father and son expressed interest, Sapp had papers ready to sign within a week, the Sikes said.
“Jerry wanted to keep it homegrown,” David said. “He didn’t want to sell out to the big guys, and he knew that Justin would perpetuate the place.”
That sense of nostalgia is the store’s claim to fame, a wave of sights, sounds and scents that’s likely to be overwhelmingly familiar to baby boomers.
Individually sealed peppermint, taffy and chocolates, at 23 cents each, await in wicker baskets by the cash register. The smell of bacon wafts from a hot griddle. Milkshakes arrive on the counter in tall, frosty glasses. Colas are customized with shots of chocolate, cherry or strawberry dispensed from an old-fashioned soda foundation. Overhead, “Who’s Sorry Now?” can be heard from speakers, showcasing the voice of Connie Francis.
“It’s pretty much unchanged,” David said. “We did do a remodel in the 1980s; put the dark paneling up, the labeling of the departments. Otherwise, it’s pretty much all the same.”
At the same time, the Sikes have updated other important aspects of the business to meet customer needs and stay competitive in the digital era.
The pharmacy is equipped with a Parata Max robotic prescription dispenser and is aligned with HealthMart, a network of roughly 5,000 drugstores nationally. There’s an online refill portal on the store’s website at littledrugco.com and the store offers free local delivery. The store’s selection of durable medical equipment is among the largest in the area, the Sikes said.
With his eyes on the future, David Sikes is looking forward to celebrating the drugstore’s centennial in a couple of years, but also is considering another transition.
“I hope to be slowing down in the near future, but we need to find the right person,” he said.
His son nods.
“A unique place needs a unique person,” said Justin, who acknowledges that there’s at least one long-range prospect waiting in the wings. “I have a 5-month-old son, so I’m hoping it (the store) is around long enough for him to take it over and run it.”
Little Drug Co.
LOCATION: 412 Canal St., New Smyrna Beach
HOURS: 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday; closed Sunday
CALL: 386-428-9041
ONLINE: littledrugco.com
Timeline: 1920
When the original incarnation of Little Drug Co. went into business in 1920, here's a snapshot of what else was happening in the world:
• The inauguration of the League of Nations was held in Paris, France.
• The American Civil Liberties Union is founded.
• Walt Disney started work as an artist with Kansas City Slide Co., where he started exploring animation.
• French soldier and heroine Joan of Arc is canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
• Pulitzer Prize is awarded to Eugene O'Neill for "Beyond the Horizon."
• New York Yankee Babe Ruth sets a single-season record of 54 home runs.
• The American Professional Football Association plays its first games. It would be renamed the National Football League in 1922.
• Warren G. Harding is elected as 29th president, defeating Democrat James. M. Cox.
Editor's note: Syke graduated from Samford University and not as originally reported.