Owners Room · Playbook
The Operating Playbook
Four phases, in order, on purpose. We don't ask your pharmacy to become something new before we've proven it's better run as itself.
Why phases, and why in this order
Owners who have sold to a roll-up before have a good reason to be wary: the usual pattern is buy, strip, rebrand, move on. Ours runs the opposite way. We spend the first stretch making the pharmacy you already run work better, on its own terms, before we add anything. Wellness gets layered on top of a stable base; it never replaces the dispensing business, and it never gets asked to carry the deal on day one.
- Phase 1: Acquire and take over
- A majority recapitalization with meaningful rollover for you. You take money off the table now and keep a continuing stake in what the pharmacy becomes. You stay on to operate; your licenses, your staff, your prescriber relationships, and your standing in the community transfer intact. Nothing changes for patients on day one.
- Phase 2: Optimize the core
- Before we add anything, we work on what's already there: purchasing and wholesaler terms, inventory, staffing model, front-end margin, adherence programs, and existing clinical service billing. The dispensing business stays fully intact through this phase; it's the trust engine and the traffic engine, and we treat it that way. We want to prove the pharmacy runs better before we ask it to run anything new.
- Phase 3: Install HARP Wellness
- Membership, quarterly panels, the app, clinical services, and the product line layer on top of the stable base from Phase 2. This is additional revenue, not a replacement for what you already do; the wellness line grows while dispensing holds. Your pharmacists gain a new set of tools and a reason for patients to come in more often; nothing about how prescriptions get filled changes.
- Phase 4: Convert to a HARP Wellness Pharmacy
- Once the wellness layer is established and performing, not before, the location transitions fully to the HARP brand: signage, front-end merchandising, format, and staff model. We use an endorsement period first, something like "Miller's Pharmacy · A HARP Wellness Pharmacy," and retire the legacy name on evidence of what's working, not on a fixed calendar.
The local name is a significant part of what we're investing in. We convert after the wellness layer is proven, never before.
Partner pharmacies keep their name for good
Not every pharmacy in the program is one we own. For pharmacies that join as partners rather than through an acquisition, this fourth phase doesn't apply at all; HARP is the clinical program and the technology behind the counter, and your name stays on the door permanently. Ownership and partnership are two different doors into the same platform, and which one fits depends on what you want out of the relationship.