Rite Aid: 1962-2025

[297point1]

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RIP Rite Aid
It was a good run...getting to 5,000 stores nationally is no small feat.
It might have turned out differently if the FTC hadn't blocked your acquisition of Revco in the 90s, but you had bad leadership then so it probably ends up the same regardless.
I will miss having the opportunity to triple my investment following a crash in your stock (twice successful!).
I love that you were the inspiration for the dysfunctional "Lucky Aide" drugstore in Malcolm in the Middle.
I feel bad for the people who are now out of work. I suspect many of the pharmacists will get snapped up unless they are on a 'do not hire/ do not rehire' list. But many are now scrambling in a labor market which is seizing up.

After decades in business, Rite Aid makes a major move amid bankruptcy

The company also thanked its loyal customers for their support over the years.

abcnews.go.com

Walgreens: this is your future if you don't fix your issues.

 

[bluc]

Rite aid was doomed when its CEO (founder’s son) went to prison for accounting fraud.

 

[lord999]

May they rest in pieces. The company was almost as bad as Dworkin’s Thrifty and Revco. Cheated pharmacists out of pay in the 90s. Before Luigi, it was one of the few companies so hated that corporate leadership was assaulted and assassinated. If you hear the story of how they got caught at fraud, he was lucky he went to jail and not made into stadium concrete.

 

[297point1]

Before Luigi, it was one of the few companies so hated that corporate leadership was assaulted and assassinated.

You can't drop 'assassinated' and leave us hanging; can you please share some more details? This is news to me and I consider myself to be fairly in the know when it comes to the chains from 1990 onwards. Thanks.

 

[projektreverb]

Walgreens is most certainly next, especially now that PE bought em out.

 

[lord999]

You can't drop 'assassinated' and leave us hanging; can you please share some more details? This is news to me and I consider myself to be fairly in the know when it comes to the chains from 1990 onwards. Thanks.

Rite Aid pissed off the Irish mob in Philadelphia (most of my family are Temple graduates) for murky reasons involving the protection racket. There's someone in this board that had institutional memories of this as well as he was a manager during that time for them. One of the CEO's kids was kidnapped, beaten the hell up, and dumped on Broad Street in 1994 or so as a message that the mob was still relevant (it is a front-page news matter). When my aunt was an intern, she and her preceptor were the last people to see the SE Philadelphia district manager equivalent alive, and saw what turned out to be his kidnapping when a couple of guys helped themselves to getting in the car with him. Before Mangione at present and before Mary Sammons took over, RiteAid had some of the tightest executive security in the country, because RiteAid had very credible threats against them.

My aunt's encounter with that, two of my uncles getting beat up by Philiadelphia North's usual crowd without any help from RiteAid, RiteAid's paychecks bouncing in the mid-1990s, as well as the entire family growing up in Philadelphia during that time besides my parents convinced us all to move to Arizona. I supposed I should be grateful I was raised out there rather than Philadelphia thanks to RiteAid. When Mary took over from Osco, that breathed life into the company for another 20 years, but RiteAid was long overdue for corporate death.

To authenticate that I know that period of time, the story of the then Professor and then Dean later Doukas getting his kid to vomit on command is true. That poor kid used to be pranked in with that, and it was a suspension level offense in my generation to even hint at it.

 

[mtlam]

Feels like Rite Aid was already dead in the water when their merger with Walgreens failed. Now its Walgreens turn with it being acquired by a PE, only a matter of time before it gets dismantled.

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

Rite Aid pissed off the Irish mob in Philadelphia (most of my family are Temple graduates) for murky reasons involving the protection racket. There's someone in this board that had institutional memories of this as well as he was a manager during that time for them. One of the CEO's kids was kidnapped, beaten the hell up, and dumped on Broad Street in 1994 or so as a message that the mob was still relevant (it is a front-page news matter). When my aunt was an intern, she and her preceptor were the last people to see the SE Philadelphia district manager equivalent alive, and saw what turned out to be his kidnapping when a couple of guys helped themselves to getting in the car with him. Before Mangione at present and before Mary Sammons took over, RiteAid had some of the tightest executive security in the country, because RiteAid had very credible threats against them.

My aunt's encounter with that, two of my uncles getting beat up by Philiadelphia North's usual crowd without any help from RiteAid, RiteAid's paychecks bouncing in the mid-1990s, as well as the entire family growing up in Philadelphia during that time besides my parents convinced us all to move to Arizona. I supposed I should be grateful I was raised out there rather than Philadelphia thanks to RiteAid. When Mary took over from Osco, that breathed life into the company for another 20 years, but RiteAid was long overdue for corporate death.

To authenticate that I know that period of time, the story of the then Professor and then Dean later Doukas getting his kid to vomit on command is true. That poor kid used to be pranked in with that, and it was a suspension level offense in my generation to even hint at it.

I don't think I'd be able to resist making them barf.

Tin can on a string by their desk with a "pick me up" note