Although it operates no stores in the five boroughs of New York City, Walmart plans to offer same-day home delivery of groceries in the nation’s largest market. The world’s largest merchant also plans to add about 100 other metropolitan areas to its list of grocery delivery locations, which would cover 40 percent of the U.S., by the end of the year.
In a related story in the Wall Street Journal, sources also noted that the big merchant is specifically targeting some cities such as San Francisco where the company does not currently have a large presence. The Bentonville, AR-based retailer is currently testing online-driven grocery deliveries in six markets – San Jose, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Tampa, FL; Orlando, FL; Dallas, TX; and Denver, CO.
In the New York City model, Walmart will be utilizing the services of its jet.com division to oversee this initiative. Online orders will be assembled at an existing Walmart store (the company has 66 stores in the metro New York market) and then turned over to a transportation service such as Uber for home delivery. Walmart may also use Parcel, a 24-hour delivery company it acquired about six months ago. Product prices will be the same as in the stores and the delivery fee will be $9.95 with a $30 minimum purchase.
Wal-Mart said it has already begun a three-week training program for store pickers and will use approximately 800 stores to fulfill its orders nationally.
“We’re saving customers time by leveraging new technology, and connecting all the parts of our business into a single seamless shopping experience: great stores, easy pickup, fast delivery, and apps and websites that are simple to use,” said Greg Foran, president and CEO, Walmart U.S. “We’re serving our customers in ways that no one else can. Using our size and scale, we’re bringing the best of Walmart to customers across the country.”
Additionally, Walmart said that it will expand its click & collect service, now available in 1,200 units, by another 1,000 stores which will be added by the end of 2018.
“Our commitment goes further than saving customers money,” said Tom Ward, VP-digital operations, Walmart U.S. “Ninety percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store, and we serve more than 150 million customers a week, which gives us a unique opportunity to make every day a little easier for busy families. Today, we’re expanding this promise by helping even more customers save time and money without leaving their homes.”
It’s clear that Walmart is tenaciously battling amazon.com for a more dominant slice of the overall ecommerce pie. And while Amazon is unquestionably dominant in total online retail sales, Walmart is gaining share while also remaining by far the largest brick & mortar grocery merchant in the world.
Walmart has successfully rolled out and expanded its click & collect model over the past two years and other retailers, who primarily operate physical stores, have done so, too. But with the 2016 acquisition of jet.com, Walmart immediately became a significant player in the pure e-commerce world; the purchase has redefined its corporate identity by combining digital growth opportunities with its existing strong national store base.
In fact, if Walmart can merge its store-based food assembly plan with a dependable delivery service to successfully execute its same-day grocery delivery plan in cities like New York and San Francisco, it can move ahead of Amazon in the same-day delivery of groceries. At this point, Amazon customers only have same-day grocery delivery options from Amazon Prime Now (which Amazon Fresh was recently merged into) which is accessible online and through a handful of Whole Foods stores that are currently under test. Amazon also deploys Instacart for same-day grocery delivery at its 450 Whole Foods stores.
This race is just beginning.
