I recently looked into investing/trying to find a partner to open an independent pharmacy. The idea has always fascinated me and I think there are some cool th

I recently looked into investing/trying to find a partner to open an independent pharmacy. The idea has always fascinated me and I think there are some cool things you could potentially do. But even if you ignore all the crazy regulation and compliance stuff (a huge thing!) - you don't even get past the "this business is simply not viable" stage. Independents are being squeezed out - you can't even reliably expect to be paid your cost for a given medication. It seems like it could be such a nice, low-key, lifestyle sort of business if you find the right area - but I found no effective way to make it even pay for itself, much less turn a profit or be able to attract any investors even looking to find community projects vs. maximizing returns. Many areas in the US are like this these days. What should be thousands of small little competing shops being eaten up by the oligopoly. Same thing happened/is happening to pretty much all independent physician groups, and is also now happening to dentists. Every single bit of professional autonomy is being slowly eaten away. At this point you can't even do one as a passion project it seems, unless you are independently wealthy of the sort to be able to operate at a loss indefinitely as some form of charity.