Two Pharmacy Giants, Two Endings: What Scaling Really Takes

A colleague asked me recently: “I want to buy more shops — what do you think?” My honest answer is that there’s no harm in scaling — but only if you think hard about the structure first. Because in the last couple of years, two of the UK’s biggest pharmacy groups came to an end — and the difference in how they ended is the whole lesson.

The short version — watch it on TikTok.

First, the honest bit about chains

I’ll be candid: for a long time I wasn’t much in favour of buying chains of pharmacies. At the end of the day it’s still a shop, with all the same hassle that owning a shop involves — and I’ve softened on that a little, because it can be done well. But the core truth doesn’t change: when you own a single pharmacy, you are the system. You’re there. You catch the problems. Open ten and you physically cannot be in ten places at once, so the business has to run on structure instead of on you. Get that right and a chain works. Get it wrong and it fails — sometimes spectacularly. Two recent cases show both endings.

Jhoots: the ending chosen for it

According to The Pharmaceutical Journal and Pharmacy Magazine, the Jhoots group expanded quickly — including buying former Lloyds branches — and then kept trading as its finances deteriorated. Employee wages reportedly went unpaid from July 2025. A number of Jhoots-linked companies entered administration, and 68 of the group’s 129 pharmacies were sold to Allied Pharmacies out of insolvency.

This is the ending nobody chooses. It kept going until creditors and administrators forced the outcome, and the branches were picked up by someone else as a distressed rescue. In the founder’s own reported words, the business grew faster than the structures needed to run it. That’s the trap: you scale the shops without scaling the systems.

Lloyds: it chose its ending

Now compare that to LloydsPharmacy — also gone, but the sequencing was the reverse. According to Pharmacy Magazine, the owner hived every branch into a standalone company and sold them off over the course of 2023, staff transferring with them. The former multiple was renamed Diamond DCO Two Limited, and in January 2024 that leftover, largely empty company began a liquidation to wind down.

The numbers on that shell are striking. Financial documents reported by Pharmacy Magazine showed debts of £293,259,027, against just £8.2m available for “preferential creditors” and £800,000 for “unsecured creditors.” And here’s the part people find controversial: over £280m of that debt was owed to companies affiliated with the group itself — including £228m to a related company and £50m to Aurelius Crocodile, a holding company in the ownership chain.

The real difference: sequencing and control

Strip away the company names and the mechanics, and it comes down to two words: sequencing and control.

Same destination — but one drove there and one was towed. Lloyds had structure, systems and procedures, and a business that wasn’t dependent on one person, so when the end came it was planned and executed. Jhoots didn’t, so the end happened to it. That’s not a comment on anyone’s character — it’s a comment on corporate structure.

So what does this mean for you?

There’s no harm in setting up a chain. But if you’re going to, be honest about whether you can actually manage more than one shop — the people, the finances, and the corporate structure. Because trust me, when it goes wrong, it can go very wrong, and I’ve seen it up close. If you decide to scale:

• Systems before shops. Build the processes that run the business without you before you add sites, not after.
• People and finances. You’re now managing managers and cash flow across locations — that’s a different job to running one counter.
• Understand your structure. Know how your companies, leases, contracts and liabilities actually fit together.
• Plan your exit before you sign. The best time to think about how a business ends is at the beginning, while you still have every choice available.

Or — don’t scale at all

Here’s the part nobody says: you don’t have to scale. Depth can beat breadth. One exceptional, well-run pharmacy or clinic — known for something, trusted, and properly governed — can be worth more than ten average shops you can’t manage. If that’s more you, my writing on building a niche pharmacy business and how to set up a chain properly are the natural next reads.

How I can help

Whether you’re weighing up a second site, building the systems to run a group safely, or deciding between breadth and depth, that’s the kind of thinking I help owners work through. Let’s make sure you scale on structure — not on hope.

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