6-07-2024 12:06am

June 7, 1947: Dan Bause and Bause's Super Drug Store Nationally Recognized in Saturday Evening Post

Lesley Misko Editor

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

June 7, 1947: Bause’s Super Drug Store, at 42 East Philadelphia Avenue, has received national recognition from the weekly magazine, The Saturday Evening Post with an article entitled “What a Store.” It praises the business acumen and merchandising genius of owner and proprietor Daniel E. Bause, Sr., a 1925 graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. He had transformed his store from a small business into the largest independent drug store east of the Mississippi River in 12 years.

The Post called Bause a "high-powered operator” who had created an “ultramodern, glittering emporium.” Representatives of the big pharmaceutical firms have attested that “for luxuriousness, completeness and perfection, they have seen nothing like it anywhere else in the country.”

Calling Boyertown “a little country town not on a main highway,” with no daily passenger train, one weekly newspaper, and “an ancient inn where guests carry their bags to their rooms and get their morning calls by someone rapping on the door, where nine out of ten inhabitants are Pennsylvania Dutch, some still speaking English with difficulty. In the middle of this country town sits Bause's with its modern glass front, air conditioning, individually lighted showcases, soda fountain with 15 booths and a modern prescription department, doing a gross yearly business of $125,000 with 11 employees in addition to the Bause family.

Bause successfully combines a chummy, small-town funny man personally with great merchandising skills. No one enters his store without receiving a cheery “hello” or leaves without a “thank you” and “goodbye.”

He also carries all the goods his customers could want with 12,000 items on his shelves: for example, 23 brands of lipsticks, each with from eight to 27 different shades. Doctors report that Bause’s prescription department is equally complete and customers getting prescriptions from specialists as far away as Philadelphia come to Bause's to have them filled.

Bause’s genius for marketing is legendary. With such things as free dolls for little girls, camping supplies for local Boy Scout troops, ice cream to school children, Christmas presents to local policemen and telephone operators, and July Fourth fireworks displays, Bause has captured the attention of the entire community and ensures their repeat business. It is a truly unique American store that Boyertown is lucky to have!