Rite Aid Teams With Amazon to Offer 2-Hour Delivery

Amazon has added another retailer to its stable of home-delivery partners.

The eCommerce giant has teamed up with pharmacy chain Rite Aid to offer two-hour delivery to Amazon Prime members in parts of Newark, N.J. and Burbank, Calif., with plans to expand to new locations, a Rite Aid spokesperson told PYMNTS Monday (March 20).

“Our customer-centric approach complements the busy lives of our consumers to conveniently meet them where they are, which is why we are excited to team up with Amazon to provide local Prime members convenient access to deliver everyday essentials right to their doorstep with two-hour delivery windows,” the spokesperson said.

The statement from Rite-Aid notes the service applies to a variety of grocery and cosmetic products, though not prescriptions or pharmaceuticals. A spokesperson for Rite Aid told PYMNTS that customers can contact their local Rite Aids to see if prescription deliveries are available through their stores.

Amazon already offers two-hour delivery windows from retailers that include Bristol Farms, Bartell Drugs, Pet Food Express, Cardenas Markets and Save Mart, the statement said.

The news comes as Amazon is increasing its investment in ultrafast delivery, even as research suggests consumers could be shifting away from that option.

As PYMNTS noted recently, shoppers are swapping delivery for curbside pickup, a move that offers merchants a chance to cut costs and improve customer loyalty.

Research from “The 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: U.S. Edition,” PYMNTS and Cybersource collaboration, found that 32% of online shoppers — or about 16.4 million consumers — picked up their most recent purchases via curbside or in-store pickup in 2022.

That’s a 37% increase compared to the previous year. Curbside pickup use increased six times as much as in-store pickup in that time.

Meanwhile, last month saw news that Amazon was expanding on its investments in ultra-fast delivery, with a Wall Street Journal report noting that the company has opened 45 new “same-day store” warehouses in the last four years, a number that could expand to 150 over the next several years.

Also in February, Target announced it was investing $100 million to expand its delivery operations to increase its sorting facilities from nine to more than 15 by the end of 2026.

For its part, Rite Aid has said recently it was dealing with a “dynamic environment,” appointing an interim CEO in January as it seeks a permanent chief executive. The company also projected a net loss between $584 million and $551 million for the year.

As PYMNTS has written, the Pennsylvania-based chain and its competitors have faced a slowdown from the COVID-fueled activities that had carried drug stores for two years.

Last year, Rite Aid announced plans to shrink its store count and reduce the density of its more than 2,200 locations.

“Further complicating the fight for consumers’ hearts and minds is that several non-core players, such as Walmart and Kroger, already have a large slice of the market that they are actively looking to grow,” PYMNTS noted in January.

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