You wouldn’t think it when walking through the doors, but Graben Apotheke was actually founded between 1340 and 1390 and is thus Vienna’s second-oldest pharmacy.

Graben Apotheke was already around when St. Stephen’s Cathedral was built under the Habsburg archduke Rudolf the Founder. In its turbulent history, the pharmacy moved eight times and changed owner 43 times.

In the late Middle Ages, pharmacists had to deal with epidemics such as cholera, typhus or the plague. These days, the pharmacy has been pioneering modern structures that meet the challenges of today’s health system not just in an innovative and cost-efficient way, but first and foremost with a focus on the customer. Graben Apotheke is a trailblazer in many different areas:

Austria’s first pharmacy computer was programmed here, it was the first to install scanner tills with pharmacy-specific requirements, and it moved administrative and bureaucratic activities to backrooms so as to be able to focus more on the customer. 

It also fundamentally revolutionised the conventional pharmacy setup: supermarket-style shelves and sales counters were eliminated along with the space-consuming warehouse. Instead, Graben Apotheke now has individual consultancy spaces, which redefine the pharmacy as an accessible and communicative health service provider.

Patients looking for advice are offered the maximum level of service. This includes the extended opening hours Graben Apotheke had to fight for: open during lunch hours and open on Saturday afternoons. 

The country’s first pharmaceuticals robot is busy in the basement, automatically delivering the products needed above and saving the pharmacists a lot of time they used to spend hunting down the medicines in the stockroom. In an atmosphere of tranquillity and customer proximity, the pharmacists can offer much-needed professional advice on the complex topic of “medication”.

Future-oriented businesses may seem the norm in any city centre, but innovation always needs pioneers: the employees at Graben Apotheke are always proactively trying to help every single customer – in ten common languages and with the combined pharmaceutical knowledge of a highly qualified team.