Pennsylvania’s Rite Aid footprint relatively intact as pharmacy chain emerges from bankruptcy; 100% of Michigan stores closed, 98% of Ohio

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — Rite Aid emerged from bankruptcy Tuesday, nearly 11 months after it filed for Chapter 11 protection and after closing about 780 stores, which was more than most analysts expected.

But the state-by-state impact varied dramatically. Pennsylvania, Rite Aid’s headquarter state and largest market by number of stores, fared better than other large Rite Aid markets, with about one in five pre-bankruptcy Rite Aid stores now shuttered, according to an abc27 analysis of Scrapehero data.

California and New York, now the chains second- and third-largest markets, remained relatively unscathed too, according to the analysis, with 22% and 24% of stores closed, respectively. By contrast, the chain has closed all of its Michigan and all but four of its Ohio stores, it confirmed Wednesday, continuing a pivot Rite Aid began early this summer away from roughly even numbers of store closings across its markets, in favor of closing more stores where experts said it couldn’t compete for at least a strong No. 2 position against its larger competitors, CVS and Walgreens.

Why Michigan and Ohio?

“We were required to go through a retail sale process as part of our Chapter 11 process, which allows prospective buyers to bid on parts of our business,” the company told abc27 News in a statement. “As a result, we made the difficult but necessary business decision to exit Michigan and close all but four stores in Ohio. While we have had to make difficult business decisions over the past several months to improve our business and optimize our retail footprint, we are committed to becoming financially and operationally healthy.”

CVS and Walgreens are both closing hundreds and soon possibly thousands of stores too but were in stronger financial positions than Rite Aid before their multi-billion-dollar opioid-related settlements, enabling them to remain solvent.

CVS has about 9,000 stores, Walgreens about 8,000 and Rite Aid about 1,300.

Rite Aid’s largest post-bankruptcy state markets, ranked by the number of stores in each state (according to the abc27 analysis of Scrapehero data for all but Michigan and Ohio, and according to Rite Aid for Michigan and Ohio), are:

• Pennsylvania, with 351 stores remaining after 20% of stores closed
• California, with 348 stores remaining after 22% of stores closed
• New York, with 182 stores remaining after 24% of stores closed
• Washington state, with 98 stores remaining after 15% of stores closed
• New Jersey, with 61 stores remaining after 40% of stores closed
• Oregon, with 51 stores remaining after 19% of stores closed
• New Hampshire, with 49 stores remaining after 9% of stores closed
• Virginia, with 32 stores remaining after 45% of stores closed
• Delaware, with 30 stores remaining after 17% of stores closed
• Maryland, with 24 stores remaining after 37% of stores closed
• Connecticut, with 15 stores remaining after 44% of stores closed
• Ohio, with 13 stores remaining after 93% of stores closed
• Michigan, with 11 stores remaining after 95% of stores closed
• Idaho, with 9 stores remaining after 25% of stores closed
• Vermont, with 5 stores remaining (none closed)
• Massachusetts, with 4 stores remaining after 43% of stores closed
• Ohio, with 4 stores remaining after 98% of stores closed
• Michigan, with no stores remaining after 100% of stores closed

Rite Aid also closed its only Nevada store.

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