Rite Aid has announced the closure of all its stores in Michigan and Ohio, following a staggering total of over 856 store closures since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2023.
This drastic reduction represents approximately a quarter of the chain’s original 2,111 locations, as reported by the Daily Mail.
With this latest announcement, all 234 Rite Aid locations in Michigan and 183 in Ohio are set to close, forcing customers to scramble for alternative pharmacies.
List of Affected States:
Michigan
Ohio
Washington
Delaware
Pennsylvania
Virginia
New Hampshire
California
Maryland
Idaho
New York
Oregon
Massachusetts
New Jersey
Connecticut
Nevada
Source: Daily Mail
“Rite Aid regularly assesses its retail footprint to ensure we are operating efficiently while meeting the needs of our customers, communities, associates, and overall business,” said Catherine Carter, Rite Aid’s manager of public relations and external communications, per Mlive.
“While we have had to make difficult business decisions over the past several months to improve our business and optimize our retail footprint, we are committed to becoming financially and operationally healthy.”
The closures come amid a backdrop of fierce competition from industry giants like Walgreens and CVS, which have increasingly dominated the pharmacy landscape.
Rite Aid’s struggles have been compounded by high debt levels, declining revenues due to high inflation under the Biden regime, and ongoing opioid litigation that has plagued the company for years.
Daily Mail reported:
Experts think that Rite Aid is moving out of areas where it cannot compete with much bigger chains CVS and Walgreens, which also owns Duane Reade.
Instead it is focusing where it can aim to be number two behind one or the other, such as in Pennsylvania.
It’s unclear when Rite Aid will emerge from bankruptcy, but it plans to return with about 1,300 stores total, a far cry from when it operated 5,059 locations in 2008.
‘Rite Aid is hoping to get itself back onto a firm financial footing, although it will emerge from bankruptcy as a much smaller business with far fewer stores,’ Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, told DailyMail.com.
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