KSKansas field entry
Batson's Drug Store and Family Market
Howard, KS
A Howard storefront where a working pharmacy shares space with a full grocery, fresh-cut meat and produce, gifts and flowers, plus an old-fashioned soda fountain pouring floats and scooping 16 flavors into homemade waffle cones.
Batson's Drug Store and Family Market compresses a pharmacy, grocery, butcher counter, produce market, soda fountain, gift shop and floral department into one of rural Kansas's most useful — and hardest to classify — storefronts.
Field notes
Why it belongs
Pharmacy, grocery store, butcher counter, produce market, deli, soda fountain, ice-cream shop, gift store, floral shop, plant store, and community service counter.
Most surviving drugstore soda fountains stop at nostalgia; Batson's adds an actual full-line grocery, meat cutter, produce and floral business.
Batson's Drug Store and Family Market has served Howard since 1962 and now operates several very different small-town businesses under one roof. A working independent pharmacy sits alongside a full-line grocery with fresh produce, deli goods and a full-time meat cutter. Elsewhere, the old-fashioned soda fountain serves hard-dipped ice cream, floats, sundaes and homemade waffle cones, while gifts, flowers and plants expand the store yet again. The result is less a drugstore with a few extras than a compact commercial center for a rural community.
Store contents
What you will find
Directory categories
Known for
- Independent pharmacy
- Full-line grocery
- Full-time meat cutter
- Fresh beef and pork
- Produce
- Old-fashioned soda fountain
- 16 ice-cream flavors
- Homemade waffle cones
- Gifts
- Floral department
- Since 1962
- Rural community service