Some locations were sold to others - but are any of these operating under Rite Aid brand?
Some are shut down.
I propose to retag all of them to shop=yes - this may aid resurvey and indicates that OSM lack data, while purging info known to be invalid.
We could add fixme or do nothing but it will keep ghost entries for years and known bad POI data is worse than incomplete POI data or missing POI data.
(unless some are known to continue operating under Rite Aid brand? then likely spamming fixme would be better)
See overpass turbo for relevant POIs (and some extra ones outside USA, that should be skipped if anyone would mass edit USA ones based on consultation with USA community)
There are some stores still open under the Rite Aid banner, but all will eventually close or be sold. Some locations that have been closed longer have had their opening hours zeroed out on the store list, but more recent closures still appear open. Most of the pharmacy locations that will be sold to continue operations probably have already been sold, and the majority of Rite Aid stores are expected to close without a buyer.
It seems the final store will be closing on July 22, 2025 according to their transfer table:
I also checked their brand Thrifty PayLess and came up with 0 results in OSM. This happened before OSM was around but wanted to be sure in case old data mistakenly got imported.
I called their phone number (automated) and it is still active and gives automated answers to a few questions, is that worth adding as a “If you have questions, contact…”? +1 800-748-3243.
Im not sure there’s better information than a HTML table from the store themselves listing the date and new location. Which ones aren’t present? That is also the exact website the automated phone tells you to go to and they make sure to say that is the most up to date list and that stores / representatives have that same list.
The best source would probably be their bankruptcy filings, but there are many filings and they are difficult to parse. You can find them on Kroll Restructuring Administration by searching for “Closing Locations”, though this will include any objections or other paperwork that has been filed. There are probably similar filings for the stores that have been sold, though those may not be public yet due to active negotiation and litigation.
Ultimately, at some (fairly soon) point, every store will be either be closed or under a new brand.
In general, I’d prefer to find some other means of indicating that a store belongs to a defunct brand that needs to be reviewed. shop=yes is potentially just as inaccurate as brand=Rite Aid. A mapper might see it and think they’re being asked whether a Rite Aid location would be a drugstore, not whether the location is in business anymore.
If Rite Aid is liquidated, then we can add it to the name suggestion index’s list of dissolved brands, which should trigger a warning in some editors. Until then, a QA tool could use the Rite Aid tags to identify locations needing review, but legal filings and other external resources would probably be more effective for identifying closed locations.
So we’d be replacing both shop=chemist and amenity=pharmacy with shop=yes, so that one POI would be located inside or near an identically tagged POI? Would, say, StreetComplete offer the option to replace shop=yes with amenity=pharmacy if it ends up being a pharmacy under different branding? Or should we use amenity=yes instead?
If the goal is to avoid overstating the POI’s continued existence, a brand:wikidata=* tag referring to this known problematic brand and an old check_date=* or last modified date would be better signals to data consumers than shop=yes, which is normally for shops that are definitely still in business.
I agree with @aighes and also personally think that shop=vacant is most appropriate, that would prompt Street Complete users to re-survey if a new place has moved in or if its still vacant!
My train of thought is: The shop won’t be operated by Rite Aid at some point. Either it will be closed (then it would be shop=vacant) or it will be sold (which is tricky). In case it’s sold, it won’t operate under the Rite Aid-brand and will be kind of redecorated. So at least for a short period of time it can be considered as shop=vacant. Like a mapper would survey it during the redecoration period.
Much like I did for the Metro by T-Mobile rebranding, I’d suggest a Maproulette challenge for it. There’s supposedly only about 800 stores remaining and more closing every day, we could try updating AllThePlaces with the latest data from their website, compare with OSM data or a previous ATP pull, and mark the difference as “see if this is closed or rebranded”
All the stores near me are just vacant now and no longer pharmacies, they need more work than any mass edit could accomplish, and the situation is also rapidly changing.