With brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• Buyers Line Up To Acquire Rite Aid Assets
From Forbes:
“CVS Health, Walgreens and grocery store chains Kroger and Albertsons are among the pharmacy operators buying more than 1,000 Rite Aid pharmacy assets from stores to prescription files, the company confirmed.
“It’s a going out of business sale of sorts for Rite Aid after the drugstore chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week for the second time in less than two years. The biggest buyer is CVS, which confirmed Thursday night it will ‘acquire the prescription files of 625 Rite Aid pharmacies across 15 states in areas that CVS serves and to acquire and operate 64 Rite Aid stores in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.”
“In a statement released Thursday evening, Rite Aid said ‘it has successfully entered into a series of sale agreements and pharmacy services transition agreements,’ the company said. ‘This includes the rolling transition of pharmacy assets from more than 1,000 store locations across the U.S. to operators including CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens, Albertsons, Kroger, and Giant Eagle, among others, as well as the sale and operation by CVS Pharmacy of many Rite Aid and Bartell Drugs stores located in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho’.”
Speaking purely as a consumer, if I had been a Rite Aid customers and found out that my patient files were being transferred to any of these other retailers, I’m not sure I would be happy. I think I would argue that my patient information is, in fact my information, not to be sold or auctioned or awarded to another company without my permission.
It probably is the case that as a patient, I do not have that right. But if it were me, I’d mosey on down to my local Rite Aid and try to take possession of my files and ask them to erase me from their system.
• The “Burgeoning” Farm Stop Movement
The New York Times has a story about farm stops, which it describes as “grocery stores stocked only with locally grown and made food, are part of a burgeoning movement to make it easier to shop locally.
“The idea is to help small farms thrive by offering more favorable margins to small producers than supermarkets do. Half of American farms will change ownership in the next decade, and the industry’s net income was more than 22 percent lower in 2024 than it was in 2022. Food advocates in the United States worry that if small farms aren’t supported by better business models, the next generation might be less inclined to go into the family business.”
As the Times describes it, “Farm stops offer a hybrid between a farmers’ market and a grocery store, selling a variety of locally grown goods with the convenience of a supermarket, complete with refrigeration, freezers and even vegetable misters. Typically open seven days a week, farm stops receive goods directly from farms, avoiding the grocery store’s complex web of wholesalers and distributors. By cutting out brokers, it gives more money back to growers, which in turn helps keep their farms operating. And by sourcing from a mix of farmers … farm stops offer more variety than a single farm stand.”
You can read the story here.
Really good grocery stores actually create the kinds of supportive relationships with farmers and other suppliers that the Times is describing – it is one of the things that differentiates some retailers and makes them better equipped to compete with the behemoths.
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