Retail News: Albertsons buying Rite Aid

With Ritz/Wolf mostly disappearing and local camera shops fading away as well, drugstore chains are often the places many people go to for prints. And we have a new development on the drugstores front. Walgreens had previously agreed to purchase some Rite Aid stores, but they are not buying the whole company. Announced today, the Albertsons group of companies will be buying Rite Aid, over 2500 remaining stores that are not purchased by Walgreens (buying over 1900 stores) according to the aforelinked Forbes article.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If Rite Aid thrives under Albertsons, the local photo print markets will get more competition and better prices. If Albertsons starts shutting down stores, it will reduce competition giving CVS and Walgeens fewer reasons to offer good deals. Only time will tell – as always 🙂