Businesswise natural Healthy habits aren’t born, they’re created. And with personal guides like the team at Mortar and Pestle: The Boutique Pharmacy, a better quality of life is just around the corner at the heart of Mary Brickell Village. Tex T by Luisana suegart PhoTos by antonio eLi healing ortar and Pestle: The Boutique Pharmacy is the spoon full of sugar that makes the medicine go down. The Brickell-based business offers its clients a truly unique blend of personalized service and exclusive products that you won’t find at your usual corner drugstore. Owner and Pharmacist Mercedes Silva opened the business last August as a means of experiencing a more rewarding career. “As a people-person, I wanted to be able to develop a professional relationship with all my patients, and not just look at them as a number,” she says. “I’ve always dreamed of owning my own boutique — I suppose every girl does!” It was at a very young age that the Cuba native started setting her sights on that dream. “I started working in the industry at the age of 16 as a cashier in a ‘mom ‘n’ pop’ shop,” says Silva, who earned her degree in Pharmacy from St. John’s University in Queens, and worked at St. Vincent’s and Methodist hospitals in New York. She also completed an internship at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. Most of her career, she says, has been in retail, working mostly for CVS Pharmacy and at Walgreens. After working for 18 years as a licensed pharmacist in Florida, Silva’s trademark Mortar and Pestle: The Boutique Pharmacy opened its doors last August in the heart of Mary Brickell Village. “I chose the area because it is in the heart of a community that is growing,” she says. “I wanted to be a part of that growth and build relationships with people in the neighborhood.” The name Mortar and Pestle comes from the original practice of pharmacy when medicines were actually customized and prepared 82 brickell magazine M Mercedes Silva and her husband aim to make anyone who walks through the door of their business leave healthier than when they arrived.