Business: Richard Malouf Chemist to Malouf Pharmacies

Story

When he was about ten, Richard Malouf, one of Calile and Ada Malouf’s grandsons, decided he’d like to do pharmacy:

I always wanted to. When we used to go to Macksville…I used to duck out of our shop up to the chemist up the road. …And I’d sit there and I don’t know, I think it must have been the smell…that got me…it was completely different from anything…and I just…had a feeling and…I decided I’d like to do pharmacy and I just went on and did it.

Another reason Richard was attracted to pharmacy was ‘because it had a retail component’. He attributes his interest in trading to observing his father, Nicholas, and aunt, Minnie, doing the buying and selling for the Malouf fashion stores.

In about 1962, Richard Malouf took over a pharmacy in the Stand building in Albert Street Brisbane CBD.  He then bought another small pharmacy in Adelaide Street.  He then opened the Beauty Bazaar to sell cosmetics and perfumes and this was the shop he moved into when the Calile Malouf family sold the Strand building in 1970:

So then when they sold the business, I moved over to there. And then I heard that David Jones were moving out of their, they had a separate coffee shop down opposite the Post Office in Queen street, so I took over that and that’s where I was until they decided to pull down the old Commonwealth Bank… at that stage… I bought Ascot in Racecourse Road. And then we sort of moved on. I took on another partner, and my brother, and we started, then we bought three pharmacies in New Farm, closed one, then we bought one at Capalaba that was just a progression.

From the single pharmacy opened by Richard in 1962 in Albert Street, the business developed into the highly successful Malouf Pharmacies.  Richard’s younger brother, Ian, studied pharmacy and joined the business in 1972. For a time, the business also included a third partner, another pharmacist, Lawrie Bray. The largest privately owned pharmacy group in Queensland, Malouf Pharmacies employed more than 450 staff and had pharmacies situated throughout Brisbane and surrounding areas, on the Sunshine Coast and in the regional locations of Toowoomba, Gympie, Bundaberg, Rockhampton and Mackay. After more than 50 years in business, Malouf Pharmacies were bought by Ramsay Health Care and added to the Ramsay Pharmacy Franchise Network.

References

Anne Lindert-Wentzell, ‘A Commitment to Service, A Family Legacy’, Business in focus, 7 January, 2012, viewed 11 May 2021, http://www.businessinfocus.com.au/index.php/2012/06/malouf-pharmacies/#:~:text=Malouf%20Pharmacies%20is%20the%20largest,first%20Malouf%20Pharmacy%20in%.

Brisbane Telephone Directory 1977-78

Malouf Pharmacies,’History’, viewed 11 May 2017, http://www.maloufpharmacies.com.au/malouf-pharmacies-history.

Richard Malouf, interview with Anne Monsour, Brisbane, 2019.

Ramsay Health Care, ‘Malouf Pharmacies Joins Ramsay Pharmacy Franchise Network’, 14 November 2017, viewed 13 January 2021, https://www.ramsayhealth.com/News/General-News/Malouf-Pharmacies-joins-Ramsay-Pharmacy-Franchise-Network.