Not the Nail Bar! Bare shelves of ice-cream, deodorant, makeup in Beacon’s hot retail summer set off readers to inquire what was going on with Rite Aid on Main Street. While there was no impact on beer, snack drinks, and vitamin supplements, inventory on the shelves has been dwindling these past months. “We’re not going anywhere,” one employee assured A Little Beacon Blog. “We have too much foot traffic. They aren’t closing our store.” Welcome to the Bankruptcy of Rite Aid 2024 Edition.

Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy in October 2023, where it sought to address its debt, close stores it deemed under-performing, sell off non-core business, and sell its pharmacy benefit company, Elixir, as reported by Reuters. “Before it filed for bankruptcy, Rite Aid faced over 1,600 lawsuits alleging that pharmacy chain ignored red flags and illegally filled prescriptions for addictive opioid medication.” According to Reuters, Rite Aid was being sued by the Department of Justice, and several local governments in opioid lawsuits for “filling suspicious prescriptions for addictive opioid pain drugs.”

According to Becker’s Hospital Review’s report of a Bloomberg analysis of court documents, Rite had had 2,100 stores, of which, 1,700 of those had pharmacies.

According to a Beacon employee right here on Main Street, some vendors were skeptical of not getting paid, so have not been accepting re-orders on product. Or, said the employee, the system to make a re-order gets glitchy to use. “But it should be better by the end of summer. The bankruptcy is finished,” they told ALBB. On June 28, 2024, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved Rite Aid's restructuring plan, “allowing the pharmacy chain to cut its debt by $2 billion and turn over control to a group of lenders,” Reuters reported, which it said saved 28,000 jobs. As for opioid related lawsuit payouts, 22,000 people stood to receive $250-$500 each, according to the article. Rite Aid reached settlements with 16 of the 17 states in which it operates in.

One ALBB reader and Rite Aid employee told ALBB via Instagram: “Beacon store is safe! Rite Aid is officially out of bankruptcy. Just a waiting game on getting the store fully stocked again 😅 As for the ice cream: the freezer is busted 😂🤣”