UPDATE: Rite Aid said no jobs will be lost by moving headquarters to Central Bread: “We are hiring”
East Pennsboro Township-based Rite Aid announced Tuesday that it is opening what it calls a new “business headquarters” in Philadelphia.
Rite Aid’s vice president of communications, Jeff Olson, confirmed that the company will move its corporate headquarters to Philadelphia. Rite Aid said the new corporate workplace is a “remote work approach for corporate partners, supported by a network of collaboration centers along the geographic footprint of the company.”
Philadelphia offers an accessible location for the new headquarters, Olson said. The company said the company’s new 23,000-square-foot headquarters is designed specifically for face-to-face collaborations and business meetings, rather than office spaces. All corporate employees will continue to work remotely.
Real estate decisions for the company’s corporate spaces at 30 Hunter Street; 200 Newberry Commons in Newberry Township, York County; 451 S. St.. Johns Church Road, Hampden Township; and at 433 Railroad Ave., in Hampden township, have not been completed.
But the company will still maintain a presence in the area, Olson said.
“We will also maintain a collaboration center in the Camp Hill and Harrisburg area,” he said. “These real estate decisions are yet to be determined.”
Olson said the new headquarters will bring together the entire company, not just Rite Aid retail stores. The company’s new headquarters will be located in the Navy Yard district of Philadelphia, at 1200 Intrepid Ave., in Philadelphia, offering space for the equipment of the various Rite Aid companies, including Rite Aid retailers, Elixir, Health Dialog and Bartell Drugs, to meet, collaborate and participate. customers and partners. The company has leased about 23,000 square feet of the 92,000-square-foot building and is currently working on construction.
Rite Aid said it plans to open regional collaboration centers across the country, including in the Harrisburg area, which will provide spaces for in-person meetings, training and development, among others.
“Over the last two years, with our new leadership, we’ve been recruiting across the country,” Olson said.
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Rite Aid has more than 2,800 corporate workers who have been working remotely since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these workers are based in central Pennsylvania.
The company said an internal survey found that the vast majority of corporate partners preferred to work from home, highlighting greater flexibility, work-life balance and more productivity, and that partners also indicated a desire to have opportunities to meet -collaborate and learn together in person. . Olson said 76 percent of his corporate employees wanted to continue working remotely.
“This announcement marks the beginning of a bright new day for Rite Aid. We are changing our business from within and our reinvented workplace is the latest exciting step into the future of this company, ”said Heyward Donigan, CEO of Rite Aid, in a press release.
“We believe in remote work and, as we lean towards it in the long term, we invest in a physical footprint that facilitates its best version. We have heard directly from our partners that teams want and need to meet in person, and we believe we have found the right balance between the flexibility of remote work and the power of on-site collaboration. ”
Rite Aid was founded in 1962 and has more than 2,500 retail pharmacies in 17 states.
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