@Colflan - great datapoint. Over the coming weeks I intend to do some similar local investigations.

Out of interest, was this pharmacy an owner-operated community pharmacy or part of a chain?

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Off topic, but still relevant, I learned about the value of this approach to analysing retail businesses when I was an early Associate at McKinsey in London in the 1990s. One of the older, senior partners and a retail guru preferred only ever having junior business analysts on his retail client projects. He'd send them out all over the country with information requests. Getting them to go into and monitor stores to measure shelf space of competing products, measure footfall and store entries and other fundamental data. He'd then boil it all up in his models. He was such a legend in European retail and was always in demand from the big retails clients. Office legend had it that he only left the office in Piccadilly Circus to go to his loft apartment across the road to sleep, because his EAs used to bring his meals to his office every day and manage his laundry. One day, he asked his EA to check how much money he had in his bank account. When she told him it was several million GBP, he asked her to go out and buy him a house in Mayfair (spcifying roughly what he was looking for) as he had no idea of all the bonuses that had accumulated over several years and realised he could better than his rented loft. (This was in the early 1990's, allegedly). Like many corporate legends, it has no doubt been embellished over the years in its re-telling. But my point is, retail is really a business that lends itself well to bottom-up analysis!