Posted on 10/06/2025 7:15:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pharmacy chain Rite Aid closed all of its locations after filing for bankruptcy twice in less than two years.
The retailer posted a brief announcement on its website.
“All Rite Aid stores have now closed,” the site states. “We thank our loyal customers for their many years of support.”
The website offers former customers their pharmacy and immunization history, as well as assistance with finding pharmacies that their prescriptions were transferred to.
The drugstore chain operated in the U.S. for more than 60 years. The company had opportunities to merge with Walgreens in 2017 and Albertsons in 2018, but rejected both, according to Investopedia.
Back in 1987, Rite Aid was the largest drug store chain in the U.S. with more than 2,000 stores, according to the financial media website.
The pharmacy chain was driven to file for bankruptcy protection in 2023 due to mounting debt and sluggish sales from heightened competition coupled with hundreds of lawsuits connected to its role in the opioid crisis. Rite Aid quickly initiated a store optimization plan that involved immediately closing 154 of its 2,284 stores.
Over the course of the restructuring, Rite Aid closed hundreds of additional stores, leaving it with a footprint of about 1,245 locations by the time of its second bankruptcy filing in May 2025.
Its first restructuring reduced the U.S. pharmacy chain’s debt, although it still had $2.5 billion in liabilities when it emerged as a private company owned by its lenders in 2024. The company also failed to address its long-term business challenges of inflationary pressures and increased competition by pharmacy chains Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Amazon.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I suspect some of those will eventually end up being Walgreens or CVS stores.
Walgreens is closing some of their stores as well.
Walgreens is almost like Starbucks with stores on every corner.
I got switched from Rite Aid to CVS. The way CVS forces you into using their app to refill prescriptions is maddening. And then when you get there, it isn’t ready anyway. It amazes me that CVS hasn’t gone bankrupt.
They closed a local Walgreens. At the end, everything was 90% off. The only things left were cologne, cigarettes which you can’t discount and ....wine. I filled my basement with it. Apparently no one drinks wine here. I was buying bottles of 15 Hands Cab for $1.99.
The Rite Aid near me had the best pharmacists, friendly and always willing to help. I’m sorry to see them go.
My new pharmacy is in a grocery store. It’s more like an assembly line. Okay, I guess. But the personal touch is gone.
Internet is providing a lot of options as to how
individuals/companies now purchase items. No need
to go to stores for a lot of mass procuced items
that don’t need to be handled as fresh produce, etc.
Take you hand held device, talk, purchase, read all
things from around the globe. Delivery services are
on the rise delivering things to your home point or
you can drive by and have it delivered to your car.
Wow, Slimes is a little late to the party. That filing was in May and they’ve already closed most, if not all, of their stores. CVS and Walgreens are having their own troubles and are not gobbling up these empty stores. Dollar Tree is picking up some of them, including the one I own.
How much did retail theft play into the bankruptcy?
I haven’t seen a Rite Aid in California in several years, looks like they’ve already packed it.
But this is California where many businesses have been driven out due to high taxes, punitive regulations and shoplifting being the state sport.
Probably not much. Theft would cause them to close individual stores, but not the whole operation. Their problems were (i) too much competition, including online prescription availability, and (ii) a $410m liability for writing illegal subscriptions. As previously mentioned, other pharmacy chains are facing similar pressure.
You can’t make a living selling prescribed drugs. You must be a retailer as well.
The fact is, retailers including grocery stores, Walmart etc sell drugs ancillary to their primary retail products.
Further, online drug sales by companies subsidary to the health insurance parents do what the “drug stores” can’t.
Rite Aid was an anachronism just not able to compete.
I had always been curious about that, and particularly why a drug store would so consistently open a location directly across for an existing one. I learned that this was a matter of strategy: if you open a new store near an existing successful one, you may siphon off some of their customers and eventually dive them under.
Looks from a link to a previous story that they’ve filed 11, not 7.
Hmmmmph....
Maybe it's not too late.
It's a chapter 11 that will become a chapter 7. All assets are being sold.
Rite Aid did same the thing as CVS. Both were Eastern drug chains with small-sized stores that expanded West by buying the larger-sized drug stores that did well by having general merchandise along with the pills and cotton balls. CVS bought Osco/SavOn (whose heritage included stores like Skaggs and Katz Drug) and later Longs Drugs with their odd mix of non-drug items decided on by the store manager. Rite Aid bought Payless out west, who was a small discount store that had a pharmacy, and Thrifty Drug who had a similar mix as Payless plus their famous ice cream. Both reduced the items in the West Coast stores to the same East Coast mix-meaning lots of shelving with very few SKUs. Rite Aid finally failed attempting that concept. CVS thrived by making a deal to run Target’s pharmacies and buying Aetna and Caremark.
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