As we discussed last week, the news of Rite Aid’s final closure comes in context of the broader struggles faced by retail pharmacy chains. This week’s graphic quantifies those trends, which go as far back as 2018. That year, the total number of pharmacies began to decline, specifically driven by chain pharmacy closures, which coincided with “reported increases in planned chain pharmacy closures, mergers and acquisitions, and the integration of [pharmacy benefit managers] with large pharmacy chains.” Since then, these closures have only picked up steam, with CVS closing almost 1,200 locations between 2022 and 2025, Walgreens planning to close 1,200 of its own locations by 2027, and Rite Aid shutting down all locations after operating over 2,000 stores as recently as 2023. The unsuccessful pivot to broader care provision, which Walgreens tried most ambitiously with its purchase of VillageMD, and which CVS teased but abandoned, has also failed to pan out, helping trigger this latest wave of closures. 
 
Suffering from a vicious cycle of closures and declining revenues, chain drug stores have become consumers' least-favorite type of pharmacy, with the greatest decline in customer satisfaction since 2017 (although all pharmacy settings have declined in this measure). Compared to mail-order, mass-merchandiser, and supermarket pharmacies, chain pharmacies offer an inferior consumer experience, and their front-of-store retail offerings lack the selection or prices of their competitors. Still, when they close, their former customers often find that a bad pharmacy was preferable to no local pharmacy at all.