Little Guyana Cafe and Pharmacy is not as odd as it seems

With doors to the Little Guyana Cafe and Pharmacy set to open in two weeks, founder and CEO Alex Singh is brewing a batch of his signature coffee and getting the pieces in place.

Shelves are stocked with convenience items, everything from instant coffee to shampoo. Piles of to-be wooden shelves line the floor, and a rolling door separates the future cafe from the pharmacy. One wall is covered in plastic flowers, and the other is painted with a “Little Guyana” mural representing the South Queens neighborhood.

From the outside, Little Guyana Cafe and Pharmacy seems oddly placed; there’s a Wallgreens next door and a McDonald’s across the street. The “cafe and pharmacy” combination only adds confusion.

To Singh, it realizes an idea that emerged when he was in pharmacy school, falling in love with coffee.

“Usually, when you go in a pharmacy there are extremely long wait lines and no one’s really happy. I did this to ideally incentivize and cheer people up,” he says.

He paints a picture of what Little Guyana Cafe and Pharmacy can be after recounting his childhood visits to the nearby McDonald’s after seeing the doctor.

“Imagine a kid coming into the pharmacy, sick, not feeling well. But on his way out, he can get a scoop of ice cream or a hot chocolate,” he says, smiling.

The business has a standout concept and is the first independently-owned cafe in the area. He’s confident, despite all of the neighboring competition.

“We know we can offer every single thing that they offer, but they can’t offer what we offer,” he says. “Our goal and our mission is to really service the community, service the people.”

As a South Queens native who worked at local pharmacies, Singh knows better than most how the neighborhood pharmacy services operate.

In Little Guyana, as named by the NYC government for its prominent Guyanese, West Indian, and Indian population, everyone knows their local business owner, but nobody knows their pharmacist, he says. Likewise, the pharmacist doesn’t know them or how to help them.

Miseducation, late working hours, and isolation from family members create other barriers to quality care within the community.

“None of the pharmacies know the patient, get to know the patient, or even understand how to talk to the patient,” Singh says.

When he realized he was caught in that cycle of giving impersonal, efficiency-based care, he asked himself, “what good does that do if the patient isn’t able to properly take the medication?”

“I could give them a bag and they could walk out of here, but there’s no benefit if they don’t understand the use and the outcomes,” he says.

Two years ago, Singh quit his pharmacy job to pursue a new dream: build a space that would fill those gaps between community care and individual needs.

Little Guyana Cafe and Pharmacy is the result–where parents can stop by the pharmacy after work, ask questions about medication, and leave with a cup of coffee that they bought as they waited. Singh is particularly proud that the pharmacy will be open until 11 pm, later than most pharmacies in the area.

He keeps locals in mind in every aspect of the brand, from the name to the convenience products he sells.

“We opened this to give back to the Indian and West Indian people who made this community what it is now,” he says.

He’s prepared to be personable and go out of the way for customers, saying he wants to sell great coffee to find solutions for prescriptions not covered by insurance.

It sounds relatively simple. That is until Singh had to face consecutive concept changes and the mysteries of electrical plumbing and permits. But that was a small price to pay for a fulfilling career and an opportunity to educate community members.

“What we do want to do is change the stigma and tighten, or narrow, the gap, so people can understand the importance of vaccinations,” Singh says.

In the local community, there’s shame associated with mental health as well. He believes the experienced staff can help combat that.

“Some of the pharmacists that we have working here have backgrounds in hospital settings, where they speak to patients and council patients,” he says. “They’re able to get into the grind of it to understand.”

Mostly, Singh wants to revitalize pharmacy. In the early 1900s, he says, pharmacies were fitted with soda fountains and snack counters. But when the industry became monetized, those were phased out.

He envisions that Little Guyana Cafe and Pharmacy will be “a completely new pharmacy with old-fashioned vibes and service.” Later, he wants to bring the same concept to other neighborhoods.

“We want it to be a place where you can come in, order coffee, and if you have questions or problems, you can speak to a pharmacist in the back.”

When Singh speaks about the combined cafe and pharmacy, it doesn’t seem weird at all. Even the most critical skeptics ease their cocked eyebrows and titled heads.

It’s his version of a pharmaceutical revolution, and it starts in South Queens.