Rite Aid said on Friday it will shutter another 17 stores in Washington, including four locations of its Bartell Drugs subsidiary, as the court-approved liquidation of the bankrupt drugstore chain appears to be picking up speed.
The 17 locations were listed in a Friday court filing that included more than 200 new Rite Aid closures nationwide.
That follows announcements last month of 360 closures nationwide, including 19 Rite Aid stores and five Bartell stores in Washington, and it continues a liquidation process that has intensified ever since the retailer filed for bankruptcy a second time, on May 5.
It also reinforces speculation that Rite Aid, which bought Seattle-based Bartell Drugs in 2020, will ultimately shutter most if not all of the hundreds of locations it hasn’t been able to sell off as part of the bankruptcy process.
Drugstore rival CVS said last month it was acquiring 64 as-yet unspecified Rite Aid and Bartell locations in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
But those 64 stores represent only around a third of the nearly 190 Rite Aid locations in the three states; Washington alone had 95 Rite Aid stores and around 39 Bartell Drugs as of last month.
While another company might still be able to buy some or all of the unpurchased Rite Aid and Bartell stores, some bankruptcy experts have said that is increasingly unlikely, given how long those stores have been on the market.
“It looks to me like the stores that have not been picked up by CVS were underperforming locations (and) are slated for closure,” Daniel Gielchinsky, a Florida bankruptcy attorney who has closely followed the Rite Aid saga since its first Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2023, said earlier this week.
As part of the liquidation process, Rite Aid has also transferred “pharmacy assets” — including customers’ prescription files — from more than 1,000 Rite Aid locations to competitors; CVS will get files from 625 Rite Aid locations.
Earlier this week, CVS declined to say which stores’ prescription files it was acquiring and didn’t respond when asked if the transfer of those prescription files meant a location would be closed.
On Friday, CVS declined to comment about the latest closure announcements and referred to a statement from earlier in the week that more details would be released once the sales had been approved in court.
Rite Aid had not responded to questions Friday afternoon.
With the latest closings, the number of Rite Aid locations in Washington could fall to 63, down from 95 as of last month, although it’s unclear when all the recently announced closures will take place or if locations listed on the company’s websites reflect any of the announced closures.
The latest closures could leave around 30 Bartell Drugs locations, down from around 40 as of last year and from 68 shortly after Rite Aid purchased Bartell Drugs from the Bartell family in 2020.
The quickening pace of closures is adding to fears of so-called pharmacy deserts, or communities with little or no access to pharmacies.
The closures also have all largely ended hopes that another pharmacy chain might buy up the remaining Bartell Drug locations and preserve a brand that was founded in Seattle 135 years ago.
That, certainly, is the view of many current and former Bartell workers.
As one former longtime Bartell Drugs worker put it shortly after the second bankruptcy filing in early May, “The consensus is the brand is over. Sad.”
