Friday, June 3, 2016

Walmart Partners With Uber, Lyft For Online Grocery Delivery

Shoppers in more than a dozen cities can already order groceries from Walmart.com then later have someone bring their order out to their waiting car. Soon, these folks won’t even have to leave home.

In a blog post this morning, Walmart announced a new partnership with ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft, and delivery service Deliv that will ferry online grocery orders from Walmart stores to customers’ homes.

The company plans to launch a pilot of the new delivery option in the next two weeks in Denver and one other market.

Deliv has been part of a pilot program delivering groceries and other general items for Sam’s Club in Miami since March.

“We’ve been working on convenient new ways to make shopping easier for our busy customers and members,” Michael Bender, executive vice president and COO of Walmart Global eCommerce, writes in the blog.

The process for delivery works similarly to the current pick-up option: customers place a grocery order online, then choose a delivery window. Once the order is received, a shopper will prepare it and then request a driver from one of the services to pick up the items and deliver them to the customer’s home.

The service will come with a $7 to $10 delivery charge to be made when placing the order. Customers will be notified if their items will be delivered by Uber or Lyft. The process is the same for Sam’s Club and Deliv in Miami.

“We’ll start small and let our customers guide us, but testing new things like last-mile delivery allows us to better evaluate the various ways we can best serve our customers how, when and where they need us,” Bender writes.

Walmart isn’t the first company to partner with ride-hailing companies to get groceries to customers. In March, Harris Teeter grocery stores announced they would work with Uber to pilot a delivery program for shoppers.


by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

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