K&B: The Purple Drugstore That Became a Louisiana Institution

Written by Jane Kellogg

For generations of Louisianians, K&B was more than a place to fill a prescription. Katz & Besthoff became part of everyday life—a neighborhood drugstore remembered for its pharmacies, soda fountains, ice cream, household goods, and unmistakable purple identity.

The story began in 1905, when pharmacists Gustave David Katz and Sydney J. Besthoff Sr. established Katz & Besthoff in New Orleans. Their first store opened on Canal Street, combining professional pharmacy services with the convenience and personal attention of the traditional neighborhood drugstore.

As K&B expanded throughout New Orleans, purple became one of its defining characteristics. What began with purple wrapping paper eventually developed into one of Louisiana’s most recognizable retail identities. Signs, packaging, shopping carts, uniforms, and store fixtures carried the distinctive shade generations came to know simply as “K&B purple.”

K&B was also a gathering place. Its soda fountains offered customers a place for drinks, conversation, and ice cream. Families stopped for prescriptions and household necessities, while children often associated a trip to K&B with the possibility of a sweet treat.

Following World War II, K&B grew alongside Louisiana’s expanding suburbs. By 1955, the company operated 18 stores in New Orleans, and it later expanded into Baton Rouge, Slidell, other Louisiana communities, and eventually several Gulf South states. By the end of its independent existence, K&B had grown to approximately 186 stores in six states.

The K&B era ended in 1997, when Rite Aid purchased the company. Purple signs disappeared, stores were converted, and a business that had been part of Louisiana life for more than 90 years vanished from the retail landscape.

K&B’s importance cannot be measured simply by the number of stores it operated. Its lasting legacy comes from how deeply the company became woven into the daily life and cultural memory of Louisiana.

For generations, K&B stores stood in neighborhoods where people lived, worked, raised families, and gathered. Customers remember picking up prescriptions, sitting at soda fountains, buying K&B products, eating its ice cream, and seeing the familiar purple signs along Louisiana streets.

Even after the company disappeared, “K&B purple” remained part of the Louisiana vocabulary. That continued recognition demonstrates how strongly a local business can become connected to a place and its people.

K&B represents a Louisiana that has largely disappeared—the neighborhood drugstore as pharmacy, meeting place, soda fountain, and community institution. Its history also tells the story of a New Orleans business that grew into a major regional company without completely losing its local identity.

The stores are gone, but the memories remain. More than a century after Katz and Besthoff opened their first pharmacy, K&B remains a distinctive piece of Louisiana history—remembered in photographs, memorabilia, family stories, and, above all, that unmistakable shade of purple.

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