Retail Watchers

On the subject of maintenance issues,a storage room behind our pharmacy literally had it's inner wall ripped due to mold growth,and don't even get me started on the store's brutal shrink numbers(double digits )

No change in net store count so far,while an undetermined location in New Jersey or Pennsylvania closed last week the third small format location that was a legacy of one of the biggest pet projects of 'the former gal' has opened in scottsville, Virginia though the posted hours may be a misprint(no pharmacy,store is open six days a week).

I'm hoping for an earnings miracle on the 20th myself,but the stock nosedive that has followed the HQ turmoil is far from encouraging though closures have remained scant so far,in fact one west Michigan location is in its waning days of business.

I can't tell where Scottsville, VA is located but it may be located in a strip mall with a Food Lion. There is what appears to be a vacant space previously occupied by something called "Super Dollar."

So it appears the shopping center there had an IGA of just 12k square feet until 2007 which was closed and replaced by a 25k square foot Food Lion at that time.

Still nine days from earnings but a pair of troubling closures out of the PNW:Just three months after North Bend,yet another small town Oregon closure.

Also,yet another Bartell Drug location bites the dust,this being one of their longer established locations:

La Grande has a population of 13k and had just Safeway Pharmacy, one independent Pharmacy, and Rite Aid Pharmacy.

This closure does not make sense.

There was a Bi-Mart there with a pharmacy too. It is not clear what happened to those prescription files. I wonder if Rite Aid bought those and now is closing.....?

Yet even a Bloomberg analyst is jumping on the doomsday bandwagon.We can only pray that Busy Burr,Matt Schroeder,and the executive team pulls of a miracle a week from tomorrow.

norcalriteaidclerk wrote: ↑April 11th, 2023, 11:19 pm Still nine days from earnings but a pair of troubling closures out of the PNW:Just three months after North Bend,yet another small town Oregon closure.

Also,yet another Bartell Drug location bites the dust,this being one of their longer established locations:

It's a little troubling that the Bartell stores are in play as far as closing, and makes me wonder about the future of that brand, especially when you consider the extent of Rite Aid's rebranding.

As for LaGrande, I stopped in that location in 2009, and it was a large, old PayLess store which had a significant portion of the inside blocked off by shelves at the time, and also looked like it had not seen much in the way of remodeling. I did a quick search for current photos, and couldn't really find any interior ones, but it looks like LaGrande did consolidate into a smaller space at some point, like many of the old PayLess stores in recent years. There was once an Albertsons in the same shopping center.

I can't tell if La Grande was relocated or just downsized and got a major remodel. The exterior of it was also remodeled.

I don't see the Bartell brand converting to Rite Aid.... I don't think Rite Aid has the money to do a conversion program.... maybe see it convert to CVS once CVS buys up certain slices of the Rite Aid cubed steak. I hope I'm wrong about what I think is going to happen.

storewanderer wrote: ↑April 12th, 2023, 12:50 am La Grande has a population of 13k and had just Safeway Pharmacy, one independent Pharmacy, and Rite Aid Pharmacy.

This closure does not make sense.

There was a Bi-Mart there with a pharmacy too. It is not clear what happened to those prescription files. I wonder if Rite Aid bought those and now is closing.....?

La Grande went to Safeway according to Bi-Mart’s site:

https://www.bimart.com/rxchange

I’d be really concerned for places like Brookings if Rite Aid closed the Harbor store… only other pharmacy is Fred Meyer, or going down to Crescent City. Bi-Mart closing pharmacies and Rite Aid on life support really hurt some of the smaller Oregon communities.

bryceleinan wrote: ↑April 13th, 2023, 6:57 am

La Grande went to Safeway according to Bi-Mart’s site:

https://www.bimart.com/rxchange

I’d be really concerned for places like Brookings if Rite Aid closed the Harbor store… only other pharmacy is Fred Meyer, or going down to Crescent City. Bi-Mart closing pharmacies and Rite Aid on life support really hurt some of the smaller Oregon communities.

We have now seen Rite Aid doing 2 what I call "market exits" from small OR areas: North Bend/Coos Bay and now this La Grande. Areas with many decades of continued operation for Payless.

Add in the Bi-Mart pharmacy closures and it appears there is something going on that is making it more difficult to operate rural pharmacies in OR than it is to run rural pharmacies in most other states. I wonder what the reimbursement issue that is causing this issue is... it has to be something at the state level.

The fact that Rite Aid did not get more of the Bi-Mart file buys makes me wonder. For some reason I thought they got a lot more than 3 stores.

Then you have Safeway doing all these file buys but then with Kroger taking over and Kroger fighting about what networks to accept... I am not sure how much the Express Scripts thing impacts OR or if/when Kroger would end up dropping Express Scripts should the Safeway merger go through.

Isn't Oregon the state where pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) is only available by prescription (rather than from the pharmacist with ID as in the rest of the states)? They may well have some unusual pharmacy rules (similar to one of the Dakotas which requires all pharmacies to be individually incorporated and owned by an individual) that make it tough at the margin in the rurals (and there's a lot of rural area in Oregon sparsely populated even as Portland and the corridor are reasonably densely populated).