From elementary school on, Bobby Muniz knew exactly what he wanted to be:  a drug dealer, the legal kind. He grew up in the drugstores where his father was a pharmacist. As a child, he watched capsules being made, and as a teenager he helped with deliveries, cleaning and stocking. But in college, Muniz thought perhaps he had been brainwashed, so he got a food science technology degree from Texas A&M and a MBA from St. Mary’s. After working in the food industry, he realized he didn’t enjoy it.  So Muniz went to Texas Southern University, graduating in 2009 with a doctoral degree in pharmacy.

“Pharmacy is what I’ve always wanted to do,” he said.  At that time, his father Robert Muniz was a partner with Ray Acosta in Rio Grande Pharmacy.  “When we first sat down and talked about going in business together, I said ‘You’re always going to be my dad.  Family will always prevail over business.’  We didn’t take it lightly,” explained Muniz, who bought out Acosta in 2010.  “There are times when we get into heated discussions.  But we have our guiding light and say let’s be rational and not kill each other.”

The senior Muniz stepped back and allowed his son to take the reins and make business decisions.  “We’ve put in a lot of automation and updated our software.  People don’t like change, but it’s been so much more efficient,” said Muniz, 42. “My dad admits he wouldn’t have made the changes,” although he welcomed the benefits they brought.  The robotic system counts out pills, and the synchronization system (the only one south of Houston and Austin) packages pills by the time of day they are to be taken to minimize adverse drug/food interactions and to increase compliance.  But it is the array of equipment for compounding prescriptions that places Muniz Rio Grande Pharmacy far beyond the traditional drug store.

“We have hundreds of patient who require compounding,” said Muniz, who works closely with physicians to meet specific needs. That includes pediatric patients who need child-size doses, persons requiring specific hormone replacement levels or individualized doses of drugs.

“Compounding is an art. Every person is different.  It’s very hard to put a capsule together that works for everybody. You really need to know mathematics.  It’s cool to see a baby we helped now five years old.” All four pharmacists have completed training in compounding medications.

Compounding drugs is partly community service (no one else in Harlingen does it) and partly a great business move, filling a unique niche.  “We see people who otherwise wouldn’t have come in.  They see our services and become customers. “

Of the pharmacy’s 34 employees, seven are family members, including cousin Michael Muniz who joined the business after earning his pharmacy degree in 2012.  “I have the same discussion with them that I had with my father:  business is business, family is family.  I tell them I have high expectations and expect them to perform, to excel and be an example, and they have. The key is communicating what your expectations are.” Several pharmacy technicians have been trained on-the-job and then passed the state certification exam.

Muniz spends about 60% of his time in the pharmacy, providing leadership and setting long-range goals as well as compounding drugs and doing consultations. “I love interacting with patients, doing consultations.” The rest of the time, Muniz is out in the community, marketing to physicians and giving presentations on health, wellness and health careers to schools (he serves on the Harlingen school board), civic organizations and health groups. “We love educating, communicating, giving people information from elementary school age to Valley Baptist’s Family Practice residents to the community as a whole.” The pharmacy also hosts a quarterly women’s night out.

Looking at the future, Muniz acknowledged his father is 69.  “I don’t want him to retire. He’s an asset, a lot of people know and trust him.  I want (cousin) Michael to become an owner and partner.  Michael and I are both working on our fellowship in metabolic medicine from the  Metabolic Medical Institute.”  That requires two years’ work, studying nutraceuticals and how the body works and responds.  “Instead of putting a Band-Aid over something, we’re looking at a problem and trying to identify the actual problem and a solution.”

Muniz predicted that UT-RGV is going to create opportunities for the pharmacy. “We want to position ourselves somehow so we can be part of that.”

For more information, see munizriograndepharmacy.com. 

This story by Eileen Mattei appears in the October 2015 edition of Valley Business Report. For more stories from the October edition, click on the “Current & Past Issues” tab.