Adapt of Fail
Fennell's Greater Pharmacy, Druid Hill Avenue and Biddle Street, Baltimore, Maryland in 1928, Courtesy of Enoch Pratt Public Library
During prohibition pharmacies commonly sold medicines along with candies and light refreshments including non-alcoholic drinks like carbonated ice cream sodas. Fennell’s, which one 1920s source called “Baltimore’s biggest and best colored drug store,” had a soda fountain where one could purchase an ice cream soda a sandwich and perhaps a slice of apple pie. The growth and popularity of the drugstore soda fountain can be traced to the development of carbon dioxide in tanks which made carbonated drinks available in the early 1900s and to the start of prohibition in 1919. Thereafter taking a date out to a pharmacy for an ice cream soda and sandwich became a courting ritual. As an entrepreneur one must constantly be open to change and introducing new products. That have been the case with Fennell's; businesses that don't adapt go under.
About Frederick Douglass Opie
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