Dive Brief:
沃尔玛is developing and testing convenience stores offering free, same-day online grocery pickup.
Non-grocery orders can also be picked up at the Walmart Pickup and Fuel outlets, though not the same day,according to the Denver Business Journal.
- 沃尔玛is testing the concept at pilot locations in Huntsville, AL and Thornton, CO.
Dive Insight:
These convenience stores, which include fuel pumps, offer “grab-and-go" items like sandwiches, snacks and coffee as well as grocery basics like bread, eggs and milk — the usual c-store fare — and are open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. But the pilots are making news because patrons can also pick up online grocery orders: Items purchased before 1 p.m. can be retrieved after 5 p.m. the same day,according to Business Insider. Wal-Mart employees will pick and pack online grocery orders from the Wal-Mart nearest the convenience store, bring them to the pickup area in refrigerated trucks, and load them into customers’ cars for free.
WhileAmazon is poised to introduce small brick-and-mortar convenience stores of its own, the stores are targeted exclusively to members of its Prime Fresh food subscription service, which requires a $15 per month membership fee on top of the retailer’s regular $99 annual Prime membership cost. Kroger, another grocery chain that offers pickup of online orders, charges about $5 for the service.
But the service introduces a level of inefficiency and cost that is not natural for Wal-Mart, which has thrived as a big-box retailer guaranteeing low prices on massive amounts of merchandise on brick-and-mortar store shelves.
In fact,沃尔玛’s biggest worry when it comes to grocerymay come from no-frills grocery chains likeAldi,Lidland Trader Joe’s, which have eschewed most online operations in favor of small stores and limited selections at prices that beat Wal-Mart by as much as 30%. Faced with stiff competition from such stores in the U.K., Wal-Mart’sAsdagrocery unit halted its own click-and-collect grocery operations in order to cut costs.
“If I ran Wal-Mart, I would be much more concerned about [Lidlcoming to America] than about Amazon,” NickEgelanian, president of retail real estate consulting firmSiteWorks, told Retail Dive earlier this year.
