Rite Aid shutters all stores after years of financial struggles

It bears asking at this point, given the revelations of recent years concerning private equity firms: were Rite Aid's "financial struggles" the result of poor management, adaptation to changing market trends, etc., or were they purchased and eaten from the inside out like a cow that fell into a piranha-infested river?

Walgreens is next.
Count me curious
Apparently it went okay for Hilton, or great actually but I believe that was really rare
- Maybe hotels are immune, given that they're full of drunk and/or sleeping businesspeople instead of piranhas. Wasn't aware of that case, I'll add it to the shortlist of exceptions to the rule of private equity destroying everything in its path.
Yes.

If you can find an independent pharmacy in your area, then by all means, switch.

I need to take prescription meds every day, so I deal with the pharmacy more than I want to. My hatred of chain pharmacies runs deep. In my case, the independent one is a little further, but it ultimately saves me time and frustration. The staff KNOWS me and what I take. I can’t tell you how valuable that can be. When I call, the pharmacist recognizes my voice ffs

Laughs in Aetna
I'm forced to use either CVS or ExpressScripts. I can get a one-off from somewhere else like Walgreens but chronic meds must be CVS or ExpressScripts.
CVS owns Aetna. 🙄
- My sympathies
- Its such bullshit, how is it allowed. I hate it.
- walgreens is closest to me for convenience of location, but i think walgreens is not doing so well as of lately, they close a ton of stores in my area.
Unfortunately, the only independent pharmacy near me when I lived in the US peddled pseudoscience bullshit front and center, with a huge homeopathy rack and an MLM essential oils wall right next to the entrance. So I said fuck it, at least the grocery store pharmacy gives me antibiotics for free.
Point is, not all independent businesses deserve your money, if they value money over their ethical and scientific training, they're just aspiring to be the next big chain.
Be picky with where you spend your money, even if it's a "small business".
I used to use Rite Aid for my prescriptions and they automatically rolled them over to CVS. CVS has been a nightmare and keeps messing the prescriptions up.
- CVS gave my wife a bottle of pills with no label. Luckily she's in the medical field and had the pill identification app on her phone so she could double check she got the correct script.
I second this!! My pharmacist has saved my butt so many times. He knows me by name and reminds me when my prescriptions are running low.
Costco has been ok for me.
Our independents are conservative mostly, signs in front about Jesus and probably don't even traffic in contraceptives.
Oddly, best pharmacy near me is Walmart. Not kidding. The pharmacists are so good, didn't even blink when my trans kid got T, they will call to try to get the doctor to modify prescriptions to include or exclude generics for the best cost, they do immunizations (I get mine there not at the doctor, usually, much easier to schedule) & when Adderall was sold out everywhere they found it for my kid who needs it, when estrogen was sold out everywhere they found it for me. They can always quickly get my vials of injectable sumatriptan, other pharmacies can't. The combo of ridiculously powerful market share, mostly not affluent customers, and very good pharmacists who have been the same people for 15 years now, we got lucky.
When my previous independent pharmacist went out of business, they transfered all of my prescriptions to the nearest Walgreens. I switched to another "independent" that was part of Rite-aid's network. The staff were poorly trained in customer service communications, passive aggressively taking control of every conversation and then not listening. I had multiple instances of prescriptions being lost or delayed, in one case for weeks. The owners didn't care why I as a customer found these experiences frustrating and eventually told me I should just go to Walgreen's. I did and the customer service has been so much better. Independent isn't always better.

Dang, I guess selling shit that you can get for half the price across the street just isn't a good business model. No one could have seen that coming!

You should see Shopper's Drug Mart in Canada. I'm surprised it works and is extremely profitable.

The article mentions nothing of Thrifty Ice Cream

The real reason I'm checking in... if winco gets chocolate malted crunch I may die of happiness
- Their website says it's available at Albertson's and Von's (Safeway)

Rite Aid previously filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2023, which allowed it to cut $2 billion in debt and close hundreds of stores.

And not a word on HOW THE FRACK they were 2B in debt!!!

Amazon and Target (and other competitors) took a lot of their business.
They were dealing with a ton of expensive lawsuits related to prescribing illegal opioids
Various economic factors including inflation
- Also just a bad business model as well, trying to be a shittier more expensive Walmart or Target is pretty stupid. If it was just the pharmacy, food, and maybe clothes if they were cheap the business would've probably done better.
Weren’t the subject of a leveraged buyout ~~mugging~~ deal a while back? That might explain the high debt load.
Private Equity?
In 2025, Rite Aid emerged from its Chapter 11 restructuring with a significantly leaner operation and a new owner: a consortium led by Cigna’s Evernorth health services division and the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CDR).
Evernorth, Cigna’s health services arm, had long been eyeing Rite Aid’s Elixir PBM. Elixir, while facing challenges, possessed a significant book of business and a valuable infrastructure.
This wasn’t simply about a larger company swallowing a smaller one; it was about strategically dismantling and repurposing Rite Aid’s assets to maximize value and ensure the survival of its core pharmacy business.
So yeah, they bought the part of the business they give a shit about and are systematically closing the rest of the business, a.k.a. brick and mortar stores.
Private equity don’t really give a shit about that fixing any lthing. So they print a bunch of corporate word salad mumbo-jumbo about how they’re gonna fix shit and when it doesn’t work out, they’re like yep we got the money that we want and the business part that is valuable. Fuck the rest of it. Who cares if there’s another food desert, or whatever the medical equivalent is, and all the rural towns at the rely on these pharmacies for medication.
I guess Walmart pharmacy wins by default.
- Private equity bought them after they filed for bankruptcy. Doesn't explain how the were $2B in debt before the chapter 11

I switched to Kaiser a while back after reading a books that suggested they offer better care due to how they are organized. They do their own pharmacy and now it’s just mail-order. Works out much better for me especially since the only pharmacy in town (rite aid) closed.

I have yet to need something immediately yet but I’m sure it will be a pain to acquire.

If you drink, when a store is shutting down and puts everything on sale, the first things to sell out are the alcohol. Act fast

Alcohol never goes on sale.
they already shut them down, at least mine was months ago when they did their closeout sale and shutdown

I bet it was the quantity of paper used for those damn receipts that put them out

/s