By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Summertime in Western New York means many different things to different people, but for many of us who grew up in the ’80s, it meant our grandmas, moms and aunts heading to Fay’s to buy everything needed for a great summer get-together.
The first Fay’s Drugs opened in Syracuse by father-and-son pharmacists Henry Panasci Sr. and Henry Panasci Jr. in 1958. The son’s wife’s name was Faye – the story goes that they left the “e” off the store name to save money on the signs.
Fay’s entered the Buffalo market in 1977 with five stores. By the end of the ’70s, Fay’s was the Northeast’s largest drugstore chain with 105 stores and a private line of more than 600 house label products.
Between 1980 and 1986, another 14 Fay’s opened in Buffalo for a total of 20.
The “drug store” with the yellow and black signs pioneered the expansion of the pharmacy from retailer offering medications, greeting cards and a few novelties, to what they called a “super drug store.”
At a time when Fay’s largest upstate New York rival, Rite Aid, sold mostly pharmaceutical items and health and beauty aids in stores averaging 4,000 to 5,000 square feet, Fay’s was selling 256,000 cans of motor oil every year – half of it Fay’s Brand – in stores that averaged about twice the size of the average Rite Aid.
It all meant in Buffalo, there wasn’t much you couldn’t get for a trip to the beach at Fay’s.
Fays used three different logos in the 80s, each seen on the 2-liter bottles here. Name brand pop was often on sale at Fay’s but the store brand was always the go-to for the price conscious shopper.
Fays used three different logos in the ’80s, each seen on the 2-liter bottles here. Name-brand pop was often on sale at Fay’s but the store brand was always the go-to for the price-conscious shopper. Fay’s also branched out with another of Buffalo’s favorite stores in the ’80s – the Paper Cutter.
There were 272 Fay’s stores when the company sold out to J.C. Penney in 1996. The following year, Penney’s also bought Eckerd, and began changing Fay’s stores to Eckerd. Eckerd was bought out by Rite Aid in 2007. Most of the former Fay’s locations still in operation in Western New York are now Rite Aid locations.
You can’t have Fay’s paper plates without the Fay’s wicker paper-plate holders!
