The Decline of Rite Aid...What Happened?

They stopped selling peanut chews that's what happened 😡

I once worked for CVS and there was a rite aid down the street. One day a rite aid shopping cart mysteriously ended up in our parking lot. And we took it in and used it as our own. Looking back, I'm glad that cart escaped the inevitable.

As someone who currently works for Rite Aid, another reason for their downfall was not using their resources wisely enough. For instance, Rite Aid no longer has the red, white, and blue logo anymore. It's now a green and white logo that they changed to. Want to take a guess how much it cost to change every store's sign and logo? Try $700 million! When we heard that, we couldn't believe it. That was money that could have gone towards new equipment (our cash registers, for instance, aren't the fastest) better technology, investing in staff, etc. Think about it; if you were the CEO of a company or business owner and you had $700 to invest, what would you spend it on? That money definitely would have come in handy when all the pharmacists and techs were leaving during the COVID nightmare when everyone was getting burned out.

I feel for founder Arnold Grass. He worked hard to make a profitable company, retired and his OWN SON ran it into the ground and went to jail! Damn. I have not been in a Rite Aid for years. Having viewed several of these videos, ive noticed that 9 times out of 10 these companies get into financial trouble when they try to expand. IDK. I get that you have to keep moving forward, but I think that most of these companies should get to a certain number of stores, then stop and say "We cant run effeciently with anymore than this. Lets just concentrate on what we got. As long as its profitable."

When they bought the Thrifty's chain in SoCal back in the 90's the change in ownership was immediately evident because the former Thrifty's store immediately became dirty looking. Rite Aid's smartest decision was not getting rid of Thrifty Ice Cream.

I worked as a pharmacy tech for a decade. How a pharmacy goes bankrupted is beyond me. Trust me, they make good money with generic meds!

Rite Aid did not value loyalty of their employees at all. Associates at the store level had their loyalty stomped in the ground by constantly being treated as if they were the enemy responsible for the company's poor performance. Corporate was not culpable for anything.

I used to work at Rite Aid as a Shift Supervisor, it was honestly horrible! We were very understaffed and overworked, not to mention the amount of theft we had to deal with. I also think Rite Aids distrust to employees was another factor to its downfall due to how much they would keep an eye on employees, and I heard it was through AP by multiple sources. Also the change to target another market audience was not enough to drive sales forward

Rite-Aid bought a regional drug chain in Michigan called Perry Drugs, back in the late 80s or early 90s. The stores almost immediately went downhill. They became dirtier, were out-of-stock more often, and lost that neighborhood feel. They basically became worse than other options, so they made it easy for former Perry customers to go to supermarkets or other Rx providers. They seemed to be too focused on growth and achieving a national footprint than on their day-to-day operations.

The whole pharmacy industry's staffing model often results in grossly understaffed pharmacies where just a few people have to process, bill to insurance, fill hundreds to thousands of prescriptions (and make sure each is safe for the patient!) as well as give out tons of vaccines, answer near constant ringing phones, and deal with large volumes of customer service. I worked in a pharmacy for 6 years and I witnessed many new pharmacist graduates who were over $100k in student debt start excited and get burnt out within a year or two, and despite spending many years preparing for their role decide to leave the career track to pursue other lines of work.

I worked as a supervisor there for over 5 years. Our store was in a small town and was actually really profitable. However, they spent so money on dumb shit it blew my mind. I just left a couple months ago due to how much they cut the payroll. I was full time and couldn't get more than 34 hours a week because there was "not enough hours" while the manager committed serious time theft:) crazy time. They have what's coming to them

Like many other commenters, I fondly remember a regional pharmacy chain that Rite Aid acquired and assimilated. Here in the Carolinas, it was Eckerd Drug. Eckerd stores were everywhere in the 20th century. Then Rite Aid bought them, and the stores were rebranded or closed. Today, all the Rite Aid stores in my area have closed, and Eckerd is a distant memory.

Rite Aid was always the ice cream place for me. Love that Thrifty brand.

I was always impressed how they managed to last this long with how bad their financials were.

This is so weird. I'm a Cloud DevOps Engineer . . . Rite Aid JUST reached out to me looking for a new engineer. When they found out how much my salary requirements are, they rejected my application outright. . . . it all makes sense now.

I used to go to rite aid for flu shots but not anymore after this years experience. The website made it sound like I was scheduling an appointment for the current week when it was actually 3-4 weeks away. Every time I went in person to ask if I could do a walk in flu shot they had a different excuse to say no. Ended up going to CVS.

The worst is that even while losing so bad for so long, they kept acquiring local chains for no reason! The one that hurt was Bartell's (Seattle area chain) - you would often see a Bartell's, a Rite Aid and a Walgreens all within walking distance of each other, but in some places Bartell's was the only option. Bartells was friendly, nice, local and had good staff. Once purchased, they closed down most of the locations and gutted the rest down to bare bones before closing them too. Bartell's was purchased in October 2020 - 3 years before this bankruptcy.

Rite Aid took over Thrifty Drugs in my area and pretty much destroyed them. I had to take my prescriptions to another drug store because Rite Aid kept dropping the ball on prescriptions for things like insulin. The employees went from friendly to nasty in about the time it took to change the signs on the stores.

I'm surprised it took this long for them to file bankruptcy. I worked for CVS in the late 90's and early 2000's and we were told rite aid was about to be out business way back then.

I worked at Rite aid for about 6 years...all around pretty terrible executive and district management. They just churned through store managers in my area. It almost felt combative towards their employees under certain leadership...they didn't care or invest in their employees. Once I left to better run companies I can see the major flaws with their HR side of the business. I left when I saw there was no viable future back in 2014.