Not long ago, this was one of the biggest pharmacies in America. Now I guess it's tied for smallest?
Rite Aid is no more. They announced their remaining 89 stores closed last week, so they're officially out of business.
They'd been on the ropes for a while. They went bankrupt in 2023, but still had $2.5 BILLION worth of debt. So they had to go bankrupt again this past spring.
If you go to RiteAid.com now, there's just a button to request prescription and vaccine records. There's a line at the bottom that says, "All Rite Aid stores have now closed. We thank our loyal customers for their many years of support."
Rite Aid was founded in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1962. At one point, there were about 5,000 of them across the U.S. Even earlier this year, they still had 1,200 of them operating in 15 different states.
They'd been fighting more than 1,000 lawsuits linked to the opioid crisis, for filling illegal painkiller prescriptions.
They'd also been losing ground to bigger chains like CVS and Walgreens. And a lot of people just get their prescriptions through the mail now. So it was getting harder to compete.
R.I.P. Rite Aid at age 63.