Qu buy with 1 euro in a pharmacy? Two aspirin tablets, three spoonfuls of syrup, at best… In Les Hermites (Indre-et-Loire), it is possible, for the same price, to leave with the entire business. The only constraints: being a pharmacist yourself and loving life in the countryside. These are the conditions demanded by the owner of the premises, Sylvie Drouet, 66 years old, forty-three of whom have been at the head of this village pharmacy. “Madame the pharmacist” wants to ensure that the 550 inhabitants of her town can continue to obtain medicines nearby, and does not want to see her replacement turn around after six months due to incompatibility with rural areas.
Sylvie Drouet would obviously have preferred to sell her business at market price. It will ultimately be against 1 symbolic euro, due to lack of a buyer. It all started about four years ago. Seeing retirement fast approaching, she decided to place her pharmacy in several specialized real estate agencies. As custom dictates that the sale price of a pharmacy corresponds to 65%-70% of its turnover, the amount of 450,000 euros is initially fixed. Alas, very few potential buyers – two – will come to visit his small 80 square meter shop topped with a green cross, and none will follow up.
Sylvie Drouet lowered her price by a third, without success. Flowing paracetamol on the banks of the Dêmée (which flows into the Dême, which flows into the Loir, which flows into the Loire) is clearly no longer a dream as much as at the turn of the 1980s, when the graduate of the faculty of Châtenay-Malabry (Hauts-de-Seine) had come to settle in Touraine with her husband, Alain, pharmacy technician. The couple was looking for a living environment compatible with their hobbies, horse riding for her, cycling for him. Successor to a pharmacy “which didn’t work well”their pharmacy will move after a few years to an old barn where Sylvie stored her horses’ hay.
Medical desertification
“Our wish today is to ensure that a pharmacy can remain in the village after us. This is important at a time when so many businesses are closing in rural areas, and finding a doctor has become so difficult., she explains in front of a rabbit hunter tasted in the neighboring restaurant. This is also why we do not want to hand over our pharmacy to just anyone. Our successor must have a lot of empathy and not look down on the farmers who open the door with their boots full of mud. » Especially since the profession is not the same here as in town, insists the apothecary, pointing out the phenomenon of medical desertification which leads him, more and more often, to dress wounds and cuts, even an injury inflicted by a stubborn chainsaw.
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