Walmart to Offer Home Delivery of Groceries in 100 Cities
March 14 2018 - 12:30AM
Dow Jones News
By Sarah Nassauer
Walmart Inc. will offer home delivery of groceries in 100 cities
by the end of the year and launch same-day delivery in New York
City, adopting a costly model it previously resisted as Amazon,
Kroger and Target invest in similar services.
Under the new program, online grocery orders will be packed in a
Walmart store by company workers and then handed off to a delivery
company or startup that uses contract workers to bring orders to
homes, said a Walmart spokesman.
Uber Technologies Inc. will be one of the initial partners,
expanding a test started in 2016. Other crowdsource delivery
companies will be added later this year, the spokesman said.
Walmart currently offers grocery delivery in six cities through
Uber and Deliv Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif., firm.
The plan also includes using Jet, the online retailer Walmart
purchased in 2016, to offer a same-day grocery-delivery service in
New York City to compete with Prime Now, Amazon.com Inc.'s one- and
two-hour delivery service, said people familiar with the plan.
Jet already delivers food to homes in some cities, but orders
arrive via a carrier like FedEx, usually within a few days. Jet
aims to expand fast grocery delivery to around 10 large cities
where Walmart hasn't built a store presence like San Francisco,
said one of these people, though specifics of the plan aren't yet
set.
Walmart is the biggest U.S. seller of groceries but its
expansion into home- delivery services follows Amazon's purchase of
Whole Foods last year, a combination that spurred several
traditional retailers to push delivery services more
aggressively.
Over the last six months, Costco Wholesale Corp., Kroger Co. and
other retailers added more cities and products shoppers can order
through Instacart, a delivery startup that uses contract workers.
In December, Target Corp. acquired Instacart rival Shipt for $550
million.
Amazon has also ramped up food-delivery options, allowing home
delivery from Whole Foods in six metro areas over the past month.
That adds to a network of Amazon grocery delivery options in dozens
of cities.
Online revenue growth slowed at Walmart in the most recent
quarter, causing its share price to drop and some analysts to
question its strategy to compete with Amazon. Executives said
Walmart was still on track to increase its e-commerce sales by 40%
this year.
Instead of home delivery, Walmart has in recent years expanded
curbside grocery pickup, a service that lets shoppers order online
then pick up their items from their car in a store's parking lot.
It offers the service at 1,200 stores and plans to add another
1,000 stores by year's end.
Walmart's grocery delivery will cost $9.95 and have a $30
minimum order. Product prices will be the same as in stores, the
company said.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 14, 2018 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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