K&B Drugs: The Purple Heart of New Orleans

In New Orleans, purple means one thing: K&B.

The Store

Katz & Besthoff — K&B to everyone in Louisiana — was a New Orleans drugstore chain founded in 1905 that grew into one of the most beloved retail institutions in the South. At its peak, K&B operated over 180 stores across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. But it was always, at its heart, a New Orleans institution.

What made K&B iconic wasn't just the stores — it was the color. K&B purple was a specific, vivid shade that appeared on everything: the store signs, the shopping bags, the generic-brand products that K&B sold under its own label. K&B purple became so associated with the chain that New Orleanians still use it as a color reference decades after the stores closed. If you grew up in Louisiana, you know exactly what K&B purple looks like.

The stores themselves were neighborhood anchors — places where you picked up prescriptions, bought school supplies, grabbed a snack at the lunch counter, and ran into half the people you knew. K&B was woven into the daily fabric of New Orleans life in a way that no national chain has ever replicated.

The End

K&B was acquired by Rite Aid in 1997 and the stores were converted. The purple signs came down. For New Orleanians, it was a genuine loss — not just of a store, but of something that felt specifically, irreplaceably theirs.

The K&B Drugs New Orleans Retro T-shirt, Sweatshirt, Hat, and Sticker keep the purple alive. Find them in the New Orleans collection.