Rite Aid confirms exit from Michigan market with latest store closings

Even Rite Aid stores that remain open, including this Ferndale location, will do so for only a short time longer. Bridge photo by Lauren Gibbons.

by Robin Erb (Bridge Michigan)

The final Rite Aid locations are officially slated for closing in a new set of bankruptcy documents.

Notices of intent to close 38 Michigan stores were filed Aug. 2, 5, and 9, wrapping up the final list of Rite Aids locations in Michigan.

“All stores in Michigan have been submitted on the docket,” a Rite Aid spokesperson told Bridge Michigan, in a brief email Wednesday.

The stores will be closed by the end of September, according to the email.

But employees are hardly surprised at the confirmation from Rite Aid’s corporate office, said John Cakmakci, president of Local 951 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

As Bridge previously reported, he said employees were told weeks ago that all Michigan stores were to close. The UFCW local represented about 850 Rite Aid employees in about 85 west Michigan locations.

With a job market desperate for workers, including those in pharmacy roles, Rite Aid workers have been able to pick up jobs elsewhere, Cakmakci said:

“For those that want to continue employment, it’s an easy job market to find one.”

Pharmacies in ‘state of contraction’

But the ongoing restructuring effort for the chain means fewer options for Michiganders, who see competitors being shuttered, too.

Walgreens also has announced plans to shutter an unknown, but “significant,” number of its stores, and a Bridge review of lists of CVS stores in Michigan between 2020 and 2024 reveal that more than four dozen have closed.

The market “is in a major state of contraction, and that contraction is accelerating,” Eric Roath, director of government affairs of the Michigan Pharmacists Association told Bridge Wednesday.

Online or mail-order pharmacies might work for healthy Michiganders or those with more simple, stable health conditions, but they fall short for older residents and those with more complex conditions, Roath said.

“Some patients require a higher level of service than mail order and online solutions typically provide. Whenever a patient goes into a pharmacy, they’re basically receiving a health care consult without the need for a co-pay,” he said.

At least 17 Michigan cities will have lost three or more Rite Aid stores since October, according to a Bridge review of court documents. With the final lists of closures, Detroit will have lost eight stores, followed by Flint, which will have lost six stores and Lansing and Saginaw, each with five stores.

Pharmacies also offer vaccines and tests for things like flu and COVID, too.

But pharmacy chains and independent pharmacists both have struggled in recent years against falling reimbursements and benefits managers that take an increasing cut of revenues, Roath said.

Others have blamed a saturated market, where competing pharmacies may be located within blocks of each other, or even across the street from each other.

A long history

Rite Aid began in Scranton, Pa, more than 60 years ago, filed for bankruptcy in October and quickly began shedding underperforming stores — more than 500 altogether, according to Bridge’s review and another analysis.

For several months, more than a dozen states shared that pain as stores were identified for closing in court documents — among them California and other West Coast states, New York and surrounding states and Pennsylvania.

But by mid-June, however, Rite Aid had shifted liquidation efforts to Ohio and Michigan. Court documents filed since then, with few exceptions, focused closure efforts on stores in Ohio and Michigan.

In all, at least 230 Rite Aid stores in Michigan will have closed in less than a year, according to a Bridge review of bankruptcy court documents.

Under a deal approved this summer, the chain will cut $2 billion in debt and emerge from bankruptcy with about 1,300 sites, according to several news reports.

As of Tuesday, the chain’s website still listed 170 Michigan stores — 14 fewer than two weeks ago. Many of those remaining have posted “Store Closing” signs on their exteriors.

A Rite Aid statement to Bridge last month made clear the chain’s efforts to survive, even as news reports and a Bridge interview with the union leader Cakmakci signaled that all Michigan stores would close.

“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,” read the statement at the time.

This article is being republished through a syndication agreement with Bridge Michigan. Bridge Michigan is Michigan’s largest nonprofit news service and one of the nation’s leading and largest nonprofit civic news providers. Their coverage is nonpartisan, fact-based, and data-driven. Find them online at https://www.bridgemi.com/.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.