The Rite Aid store on Deinhard Ln. in McCall is one of just two pharmacies in McCall, and one of just three in Valley County.
Now, with the chain entering bankruptcy for the second time in two years, the future of the McCall store isn’t clear.
Rite Aid said it plans to sell or close all of its pharmacy locations or transfer prescriptions to other companies. For now, Rite Aid will remain open.
“Rite Aid customers can continue to access pharmacy services and products in stores and online, including prescriptions and immunizations,” the company said in a news release.
You might have noticed the shelves at the McCall store are quite bare. Rite Aid said it has struggled with getting inventory from vendors, which led to a “vicious cycle” of losing sales, and vendors tightening credit terms, leading to even bigger inventory issues. While Rite Aid figures out how to sell its list of pharmacy customers, the stores might become even more thinly stocked.
“At this time, Rite Aid has generally stopped purchasing goods and services, except for those that it believes are essential to supporting this process,” the company wrote to vendors.
Rite Aid will stop honoring gift cards on June 5th, according to a notice on its website. The Rite Aid Rewards program is also being wound down.
Rite Aid CEO Matt Schroeder said the company is “encouraged by meaningful interest from a number of potential national and regional strategic acquirers.”
In the Boise area, Rite Aid closed a number of stores in recent years, and sold prescription lists to Albertsons, Walgreens, and Fred Meyer. In McCall, it could either sell the list to Albertsons and consolidate operations, or to a third party, which would have to enter the market. If Albertsons acquired the list, it would be the only provider of prescriptions in McCall, and with Medcap Pharmacy in Cascade, one of just two in the county.
Medcap opened in Cascade last year with limited operations, two years after the Watkins Pharmacy burned down.
