A long-vacant Rite Aid pharmacy on Torresdale Avenue in Tacony has new life as a full-service grocery store. Super Foodtown opened its doors at 6327 Torresdale Ave. on Oct. 16, bringing fresh produce, meat and seafood counters to a stretch of the neighborhood that had been without a pharmacy since the chain's retreat from the block.
The roughly 11,000-square-foot store is owned and operated by independent grocer Mike Said, according to The Shelby Report. The outlet reports the store carries organic and natural products along with a large international foods aisle, rounding out the produce, meat and seafood offerings. The Tacony location is the third new Foodtown store to open since summer, per the same outlet.
The supermarket operates under Allegiance Retail Services, a retailer-owned cooperative with Foodtown as a member, as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Samer Rahman, the cooperative's president and COO, said Foodtown's Philadelphia expansion would improve local access to fresh, quality, affordable food, according to the Inquirer's reporting.
A Growing Footprint Across Philadelphia
Foodtown already operates Philadelphia locations at 3528 I St. in Kensington and at 6515 Castor Ave. in Oxford Circle, the Inquirer notes. The Kensington store, also known as Super Foodtown of I Street, sits in the Harrowgate Plaza Shopping Center and spans about 17,000 square feet, according to a Patch listing for that store's grand opening, which identifies Carlos Ubiera as its owner.
Nearby supermarkets in Tacony include ShopRite and Save A Lot on Frankford Avenue and an Acme on Roosevelt Boulevard, per the Inquirer's reporting. The Foodtown online circular lists deals including two five-pound bags of russet potatoes for five dollars, hot house beefsteak tomatoes for ninety-nine cents per pound, and club-cardholder center cut pork chops for a dollar ninety-nine per pound with a three-pound purchase, the newspaper reports.
Rite Aid's Bankruptcy Leaves Empty Storefronts
The Tacony address appeared on a list of Rite Aid store closings in Pennsylvania published by PennLive, which identified the site as 6327-43 Torresdale Ave. Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy in 2025, according to the Inquirer, and has since closed all of its stores.
The chain's retreat has left a wave of vacant real estate across the region. More than 1,200 Rite Aid sites are up for sale across 15 states, with 121 properties either on the market or soon to be available in Greater Philadelphia alone, according to CRE Daily. Developers in the region are already converting former Rite Aid locations into residential units, medical offices and entertainment venues, the outlet reports.
Among the examples CRE Daily cites, OCF Realty plans to demolish a former Rite Aid at 801 S. Ninth St. and replace it with 25 residential units — 16 condos and nine single-family homes. A former Rite Aid on North Broad Street is being leased to medical providers, while a store in Cherry Hill is being converted into an Activate gaming and entertainment location, per the same report. Rite Aid's former 66,000-square-foot headquarters at the Philadelphia Navy Yard is also available for lease, alongside an 850,000-square-foot distribution center in Burlington County.
Grocery Chains Reshuffle Across The City
Foodtown's Tacony debut lands amid broader movement in the region's grocery landscape. Giant has opened locations at Andorra Shopping Center and in South Philadelphia, according to the Inquirer, while Whole Foods plans to open a smaller-format store in Center City in the coming years.
That expansion follows Amazon's decision to close all of its physical Amazon Fresh stores earlier in 2026, including six in the Philadelphia region, as reported by the Inquirer in a separate article. Amazon said it made the difficult decision to close its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores and convert various locations into Whole Foods Market stores, according to a company statement posted on Amazon's newsroom. The company said it plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years, along with five additional Whole Foods Daily Shop locations by the end of 2026, and noted Whole Foods has grown to more than 550 locations with over 40% sales growth since Amazon acquired it in 2017.
For Tacony, the immediate change is simpler: a storefront that sat as a closed pharmacy now has produce bins, a seafood counter and shelves of international groceries again open to neighbors.
