Rite Aid Buys Brooks Drugs

The Brooks Drugs store on Main Street in Randolph will turn into a Rite Aid store over the next 16 months.

Local staff has been told that little changes will be made at first, but eventually the store will introduce more items of the Rite Aid brand.

The Randolph store is one of all 31 Brooks Drugs stores in Vermont that were purchased Monday by Rite Aid.

Purchase was from the Jean Coutu Group of Canada, which owned both the Brooks and Eckerd chains, in a $4 billion deal that involved both cash and stock transfers. Some 1854 stores were involved in all, in 18 states.

The acquisition gives Rite Aid more than 5,000 stores in 31 states and the District of Columbia, with a strong presence on both the East and West coasts, and makes it the largest drugstore chain on the East Coast, the company said.

For reasons of competition, Rite Aid will be requred by the Attorney General's office to sell its stores in Newport, Lyndonville, and St. Johnsbury.

Asst. Atty. Gen Julie Brill of Randolph, who has handled the negotiations for the state, explained that the anti-trust agreement will promote customer choice.

Rite Aid said that among the changes customers would start to see shortly in the former Brooks stores will be more non-pharmacy items for sale

Starting immediately, Rite Aid will fully convert 23 Brooks "pilot stores," to new layouts and store technology.

Once the pilot store conversion is completed, Rite Aid will begin replacing systems in all of the acquired stores, which is expected to be completed by next March. The complete "rebranding" of all stores will take 16 months, the company said.

Over the next several years, Rite Aid plans to fully remodel almost all of the Brooks and Eckerd stores, investing more than $1 billion in the upgrades.

The company also plans to open 1000 new stores.

Before the acquisition, Rite Aid had annual revenues of $17.5 billion and 3,332 stores in 27 states and the District of Columbia. The acquision will add about $10 billion in annual revenues.