The Village Apothecary

I’ve only stopped in here a few times during my years in Ann Arbor but if you are on campus it is pretty convenient. They have a good selection of most items and they actually have decent prices for over the counter medicines and things like cough drops (that’s the only thing I’ve bought here when I didn’t have a car on campus). Other items are priced way too high but if you need something in a hurry it’s probably easier just to spend the money than to go to another place.

Prices are marked up, but the selection is decent and the service is usually friendly (at worst noncommittal and never bad). I usually go here for energy drinks or chapstick, but I have filled an Rx here before, and the pharmacist in the back was very friendly.

Get your quick fix NyQuil here. Random mix of stuff.

Yeah, they’ve got a decent selection of stuff you might need; soap and condoms and cough medicine for all you dirty, horny, sick college students out there. What they seem to forget, though, is that college kids are poor. Plan to spend more than you’d expect, and get treated relatively poorly and slowly while doing it.
If nothing else, their location’s pretty good.

Prices here are incredibly high, and service is poor. Be careful when purchasing OTC products, since they’re frequently past their sell-​by date. If you’re ever coming in here for your dietary supplements or NoDoz, reach around the products on the front of the shelf for those in the back — they’re newer. Employees are slow and generally rude. I’d advise you not to come here if you’re in any kind of hurry, but there really aren’t any other better options nearby.
Some people might want to give this place a pass since it’s independently owned, but any benefits a customer might derive from that are missing here. It’s just like every other drugstore you’ve ever been in, except smaller and pricier, and with a quaint exterior façade. Big deal.
Let’s hope the CVS is better — I doubt it could be any worse.

I’m into lists lately, so…
Pros:
— They’re the only drugstore within walking distance of campus.
— I don’t usually freeze to death while walking there.
— They have toiletries when I need them.
— They also have a lot of cold medicine and EmergenC, both of which I need constantly.
— One of the girls who works there is really nice to me — and pretty.
— They have healthy snack bars.
Cons:
— They basically have a monopoly.
— Which means almost all the toiletries are marked up.
— I don’t like paying more for the same products.
— And they don’t carry all the cheap brands like CVS and Rite Aid do. Sometimes I want my Wet-​N-​Wild lipstick, OK?
— The pharmacy isn’t open all the time, and the people who fill the prescriptions tend to be kind of distracted and not very attentive.
So, I’ll stick to
for my big toiletry purchases, but when I need it right away, I’m glad it’s there.

This is a pretty small pharmacy, but they have a really wide variety of things a student without a car might need, and they’re right to U of M’s campus.
If you needed to pop in to get a prescription filled, you could also walk out with razors and shampoo at reasonable rates. They have a little of everything, from junk food to nail clippers.

Hello, Village Apothecary! Where else can I get a pregnancy test and a pack of smokes to inhale on my way to take that pregnancy test? I’m just honestly and seriously saying that I had to hop into tons of places before I could find a spot that sold the preggers tell-​all. White Market didn’t have one. Diag Party Store didn’t have one.
It’s also a convenient place to get a script filled if you don’t have a car around these parts. You can grab a magazine while you’re at it, some shampoo, some trail mix. You can’t go wrong.

I walked into Village Apothecary really sick sophomore year at U-​M. I was dizzying around the store in a cold-​sweat, ready to vomit, and a really sweet older employee personally directed me to what I was looking for. This is the kind of drugstore that every city needs. I also learned that if you buy their nutrigrain bars individually they are cheaper than a box of them at Meijer (nice!).

Great little drug store. They have all the essentials in case you (ahem) leave the house without deodorant or need to buy floss because you can’t get part of your lunch out from between your teeth. I speak from experience.
The pharmacy is excellent too, very quick to fill prescriptions. I have more faith in them than the drones at CVS not to screw up my prescription refills.
While this is part of the Sav-​Mor chain, this drug store feels way less chainy than most of your other pharmacy options around town. Also, this place has been around for a long time… probably longer than Perry Drugs (remember those?). I recently saw a photo of South U in 1969 and noticed the same distinctive Village Apothecary store front.

Good personal service in the pharmacy. The range of products is startling when you see such a small retail space. They deliver (or used to – haven’t checked recently).