By Aira Villanueva-Vinoya Managing Editor, Philippine Retailing Magazine Senior Project Officer, PRA

He didn ' t ask for a dynasty. He just showed up, summer after summer, floor after floor, until Mercury Drug felt less like a company he inherited and more like a home he had always known.

There is a particular kind of pressure that comes not from being told what to do, but from watching people you love pour their lives into something and realizing, quietly, that it is now yours to carry. Steven Que Azcona, President of Mercury Drug Corporation, carries that pressure the way most people carry their keys: always with him, never making a show of it.

… He is, by his own cheerful admission, a homebody. His friends tease him about the sports car he never bought, the trips he skips. His decompression is video games at home, quiet dinners with his parents. And yet this same man oversees more than 1,500 stores and 16,000 employees— a workforce that spans five generations, from an 80-year-old on the floor to fresh graduates just stepping in.

The generational question is perhaps the most fascinating thread in his leadership

… But beneath the management philosophy and the operational metrics, there is something more personal animating Mercury Drug ' s next chapter. When Steven speaks about the company ' s corporate social responsibility work, his voice shifts. This is not the language of a PR brief, this is inheritance of a different kind. Don Mariano built Mercury Drug from nothing. He came from simple beginnings, and every act of community generosity he undertook later in life was, at its core, a thank you. A receipt for kindness received. Steven has taken that ethos and channeled it into education— scholarship programs for sciences and pharmacy, outreach to far-flung communities, even access to potable water through Operation Patubig.

" Whatever help grandpa received while he was building Mercury, he’ d like to return it to the community. Give back, as a thank you."

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Sitting down with the Philippine Retailers Association( PRA) for a rare interview, one thing becomes immediately clear: he doesn ' t do fanfare. What he does and what he has always done is show up. And in the Mercury Drug story, showing up has always meant everything.

Long before any title or corner office, Steven was the teenager who spent his summer vacations not at the beach, but in the warehouse. His grandfather, the founder of Mercury Drug Corporation, Mariano Que, would tell him: " Since you ' re here, why don ' t you train?" And so, he did. Department by department. Floor by floor. Season by season until he knew the company not as an heir reading reports, but as someone who had felt it from the inside.

" Knowing the employees, knowing everyone in the company— it really solidified my relationship with them."

That phrase " solidified my relationship " is telling. For Steven, leadership is not a transaction. It is a relationship, built slowly, earned through presence. In a country where family businesses often struggle with succession precisely because heirs arrive as strangers, he started as someone who already belonged.

story. His management committee is already multi-generational by design: the old guard ' s wisdom and the new generation ' s appetite for digital disruption seated at the same table. " The older generation would insist, this is the right way," he explains with a smile. " Then the younger generation would say, but this hasn ' t been tested yet." His role, as he sees it, is not to choose sides but it ' s to find the gold in both.

" I try to see both sides of the picture. The older generation have their wisdom. The new generation have new ideas, new technology."

There is maturity in that approach that belies his age and perhaps it explains it. Steven was shaped by two different teachers. His grandfather, Don Mariano, was the“ buddy-buddy” type. He is warm, story-filled, always reminding him to live within your means and to know the difference between what you want and what you need. His mother, Vivian Que Azcona, is sharper, disciplined, checklist-driven, allergic to procrastination. " What you can do today, do today," she tells him. " Baka bumabagal ka." Steven laughs at the memory, recognizing himself in both.

He visits stores when he can. Cebu so far, Mindanao next on his list. When he walks in, he checks two things first: how it looks, and how it feels for the customer. Because Mercury Drug ' s customer, as Steven reminds us with quiet gravity, is not someone browsing for pleasure. They are sick, or scared, or tired. They need the experience to be seamless. They need to feel cared for.

That awareness, that the person at the counter is having a hard day is perhaps the most profound thing that has passed from generation to generation in the Que family. Not just a business model. Not just a brand. But the conviction that a pharmacy is, at its heart, an act of service.

… Steven Que Azcona did not get a gap year. He got the warehouse. He got the checklists. He got the quiet, unglamorous education of learning a company from the ground up and from the people who built it with their hands. Looking at him now, very calm, grounded, clear-eyed, it is hard to argue he got the worse deal.

Mercury Drug turns 80 this decade. And at the center of that milestone stands a young man who, summer by summer, chose to stay and in staying, found exactly where he was meant to be.