Honoree | Christina Procaccianti, Green Line Apothecary
Christina Procaccianti’s independent apothecary and soda fountain in South Kingstown provides her clients with a package hard to find elsewhere: expertly filled medical prescriptions, natural medicines and soda jerk-served, all-natural drinks and ice cream.
Moreover, Green Line Apothecary will deliver your medical prescriptions free of charge in the pharmacy’s restored 1949 Chevrolet panel van.
The business celebrated its first anniversary with a gala celebration on May 19 in its parking lot. A happy crowd jammed the lot to watch a free movie, the 1978 classic musical “Grease,” eat free popcorn and sample Green Line’s latest “limited-edition, natural ice cream,” cookies and cream.
Procaccianti, born in New Jersey, said she first “fell in love with independent pharmacies” as a young girl helping her father in his greeting card business by arranging and changing greeting cards on pharmacy racks.
“I always wanted to be a pharmacist like that,” she said.
Her initial major step in that direction was graduating from Northeastern University in Boston in 2007 with a six-year doctor of pharmacy degree.
Procaccianti became the mother of three children while practicing her professional career at Walmart in Lynn, Mass., and Mass General Hospital in Boston; later when she became a pharmacist, in Mystic, Conn., at McQuade’s, one of a small chain of grocery-pharmacies, the Procacciantis moved to South Kingstown.
Then last year, Procaccianti opened her independent pharmacy and soda fountain on Wakefield village’s Main Street – a few blocks away from three giant competitors, CVS Health Corp., Rite Aid and Walgreens.
“I felt it was a good place to return to the classic American drugstore and that’s what I have created,” she said. “Our pharmacy matches any other big-chain pharmacy in its ability to fill prescriptions, and costs no more. But we also feature an authentic, antique soda fountain that offers the 19th-century and early 20th-century classic sodas that soda jerks once served to cover the bad taste of medicine.
“What we don’t serve,” Procaccianti noted, “are contemporary, chemical additives such as high fructose corn syrup and aspartame.”
In its first 12 months, Procaccianti said Green Line has gone from “no revenue to profitability and expects continuing growth in its second year.”
Initially, she has been the only full-time employee, supported by part-timers. Now she plans to add a pharmacy assistant and what used to be called a soda jerk.
Procaccianti said her “personal objective is to make a positive contribution to our clients’ health and welfare.
“I want to be the community pharmacist here,” she said.
