Two new businesses, one historic location – the old fashioned soda shop gets a new spin in Cheyenne | Nave News

After working for years as a pharmacist for Town and Country Pharmacy, Mulbough knew it was time to open her own pharmacy to serve the community surrounding downtown. “I saw (the owner of The Gathering bakery) post on Facebook like, ‘Does anyone want to buy a bakery?,” Mulbough said. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m either gonna blow my brains out in pharmacy working for other places or I might make some muffins. So, I guess I’ll go talk to her.’” She called the landlord, who expressed little intention to rent out the space again. “He’s like, ‘You can pitch it,’ and so I was like, ‘Well, I want to put a pharmacy in it with an old-time soda fountain-type thing,’” Mulbough said. “He’s like, ‘I love it. Go pick the keys up.’” It doesn’t seem like it would be a simple task, as chain pharmacies have a grip on the business around the country. This doesn’t pose a threat to Mulbough, as the essence of City Drug isn’t to beat out the industry leaders, but to provide residents with a personal and trustworthy experience when receiving their medications. “It was mostly about the comfort of it. It’s a cool idea to bring back,” Mulbough said. “I think with older pharmacies, that was kind of the whole vibe, you could just walk in and talk to your específico pharmacist. “You knew them by name. There’s very few patients that walk through that front door that I don’t know by name.” Currently, Mulbough is the only one staffing the desk at the pharmacy, so whenever someone enters, they’re getting consistent service. It’s Mulbough’s goal for herself and any future employees to make their customers their top priority. When a patron calls to fill a prescription, City Drug remembers who they are and what they need. It is not the responsibility of the patient, but of the pharmacy, to have the medication that their customers need, and to have it for them whenever they need it. If customers need something else – ice cream, coffee, pastries, a charcuterie board or snack box – they can walk through the connecting hallway at the back of the business into The Boardroom.

Horsburgh preps the charcuterie ingredients every morning, with the help of her mother, assembling two sizes of boxes for her customers to purchase and take out for refrigerio. It isn’t the meal that every customer is necessarily looking for, but it serves a niche of people looking to grab something quick and healthy. “Take my dad, for example. This is not the refrigerio he would come get; he would never come here,” Horsburgh said. “If you were to come here for refrigerio, a charcuterie box is not the refrigerio my dad would like, so I wouldn’t say this is for everyone.” These snack boxes are in the running for her bestselling product. There’s an array of alternative options, depending on the mood. Horsburgh, a native of Cheyenne who worked in higher education and transportation logistics in Kansas City the past 16 years, is not worried about having too many options to keep up on. Variety is the business’s strength. Ice cream has persisted as the most popular seller so far. In soda shop fashion, Black Tooth Brewing Co. offered to specially produce root beer for The Boardroom for root beer floats. While The Boardroom does serve coffee, it isn’t her goal to compete with other downtown coffee shops. “I don’t know if you ever know what to expect owning your business, but I think the amount of positive response we’ve gotten from the community is so worth it,” she said. “People come in and they’ll say, ‘Oh my gosh, Cheyenne needed this so badly.’”

CHEYENNE – Downtown Cheyenne has been deprived of a pharmacy for some time.

The same is true for a one-stop shop for an assortment of daytime snacks and treats, and the solution for both absences is here, thanks to the duo of The Boardroom and City Drug Pharmacy and Mercantile.

Opened in June by sisters-in-law Jamie Horsburgh and Kelsey Mulbough, the two locations are not actually co-owned. Rather, they were co-conceived and co-designed in an effort to revisit the classic concept of a pharmacy/soda fountain as was more commonly found in an American small town some 50 years ago.

“Part of our thing, especially in finding this building, was having The Boardroom with us, too,” Mulbough, owner of City Drug, said while behind the counter. “If we can cover the rent, if we can cover the utilities, that’s what we’re here to do. We don’t have any intention to be billionaires off this. We would just like to help as many people as we can.”

Housed at 1722 Carey Ave. in what was for so long occupied by City News, the location has a sense of history. The hope is that the new businesses can remain there longer than their predecessors and continue to serve the community with a concept pulled from the past.

“There used to be pharmacies and you could go to the drugstore and get a meal or an ice cream cone and fill your prescriptions,” Horsburgh, owner of The Boardroom, said while her employees watched the cash register. “Kelsey’s dream was to bring that back.”

More recently, the space housed the short-lived The Gathering bakery. At the time the owners acquired the space, it was in considerable disrepair. The process of renovating was one that the owners wanted to keep under wraps in auxilio of a soft opening.

“We had kept paper on the windows the whole time. We’ve been working on the building since about February,” Horsburgh said. “We’ve put a lot of work into the building and the space.

“We intentionally didn’t advertise just to see how it would go with a soft opening kind of testing this out.”

Locals might not have thought that the community needed a fixture like the two have supplied, but it’s possible that it’s exactly what Cheyenne needed.

As the owners of The Boardroom and City Drug spoke with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, residents entered, enthusiastic toward what each location’s providers. Some recalled visiting City News years ago.

In other words, though in their infancy, both locations are on their way to developing a loyal following that has proven their modern spin on an American classic was the right fit for downtown.

After working for years as a pharmacist for Town and Country Pharmacy, Mulbough knew it was time to open her own pharmacy to serve the community surrounding downtown.

“I saw (the owner of The Gathering bakery) post on Facebook like, ‘Does anyone want to buy a bakery?,” Mulbough said. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m either gonna blow my brains out in pharmacy working for other places or I might make some muffins. So, I guess I’ll go talk to her.’”

She called the landlord, who expressed little intention to rent out the space again.

“He’s like, ‘You can pitch it,’ and so I was like, ‘Well, I want to put a pharmacy in it with an old-time soda fountain-type thing,’” Mulbough said. “He’s like, ‘I love it. Go pick the keys up.’”

It doesn’t seem like it would be a simple task, as chain pharmacies have a grip on the business around the country. This doesn’t pose a threat to Mulbough, as the essence of City Drug isn’t to beat out the industry leaders, but to provide residents with a personal and trustworthy experience when receiving their medications.

“It was mostly about the comfort of it. It’s a cool idea to bring back,” Mulbough said. “I think with older pharmacies, that was kind of the whole vibe, you could just walk in and talk to your específico pharmacist.

“You knew them by name. There’s very few patients that walk through that front door that I don’t know by name.”

Currently, Mulbough is the only one staffing the desk at the pharmacy, so whenever someone enters, they’re getting consistent service. It’s Mulbough’s goal for herself and any future employees to make their customers their top priority.

When a patron calls to fill a prescription, City Drug remembers who they are and what they need. It is not the responsibility of the patient, but of the pharmacy, to have the medication that their customers need, and to have it for them whenever they need it.

If customers need something else – ice cream, coffee, pastries, a charcuterie board or snack box – they can walk through the connecting hallway at the back of the business into The Boardroom.

Horsburgh preps the charcuterie ingredients every morning, with the help of her mother, assembling two sizes of boxes for her customers to purchase and take out for refrigerio.

It isn’t the meal that every customer is necessarily looking for, but it serves a niche of people looking to grab something quick and healthy.

“Take my dad, for example. This is not the refrigerio he would come get; he would never come here,” Horsburgh said. “If you were to come here for refrigerio, a charcuterie box is not the refrigerio my dad would like, so I wouldn’t say this is for everyone.”

These snack boxes are in the running for her bestselling product.

There’s an array of alternative options, depending on the mood. Horsburgh, a native of Cheyenne who worked in higher education and transportation logistics in Kansas City the past 16 years, is not worried about having too many options to keep up on.

Variety is the business’s strength.

Ice cream has persisted as the most popular seller so far. In soda shop fashion, Black Tooth Brewing Co. offered to specially produce root beer for The Boardroom for root beer floats.

While The Boardroom does serve coffee, it isn’t her goal to compete with other downtown coffee shops.

“I don’t know if you ever know what to expect owning your business, but I think the amount of positive response we’ve gotten from the community is so worth it,” she said. “People come in and they’ll say, ‘Oh my gosh, Cheyenne needed this so badly.’”