SAN ANTONIO, Texas, April 10, 2019 — Building on its commitment to save customers time and money in new ways, Walmart expects to spend an estimated $265 million this year in Texas through the remodeling of 54 stores, as well as the launch and continued expansion of several customer-focused innovations.
“Our primary goal is to save time and money for our customers and there is no better place for shopping and convenience than Walmart,” said Uli Correa, Walmart Regional General Manager. “We’re very excited about rolling out improvements and innovations in 2019 that fit into our customers’ busy lifestyles and make shopping even easier.”
2019 Walmart Remodels in Texas
Walmart plans to remodel 54 stores in the following locations:
- Abilene-Sweetwater
- Amarillo
- Austin
- Beaumont-Port Arthur
- Corpus Christi
- Dallas – Ft. Worth
- El Paso
- Harlingen
- Houston
- Odessa-Midland
- San Antonio
- Shreveport
- Tyler - Longview
- Waco-Temple
- Wichita Falls
2019 Walmart Innovations in Texas
Walmart will continue to innovate to help customers save time and money by creating a seamless shopping experience that gives them the options to shop when, where and how they want. The following are examples of the customer-focused innovations that will be launching or expanded this year in Texas.
1. Grocery Pickup
- Busy customers love Walmart’s grocery pickup option. It gives them the convenience of shopping online and the ease of quickly picking up groceries without having to leave their cars. The best part: it’s all at no additional cost. Walmart plans to expand the popular program to more than 74 stores across the state by the end of the year. The company also recently introduced Walmart Voice Order, which allows customers to simply say “Hey Google, talk to Walmart” and the Google Assistant will add items directly to their Walmart Grocery cart.
2. Grocery Delivery
- Walmart’s convenient grocery delivery service is also proving to be a hit with customers. This year, Walmart plans to add the service to 84 stores, increasing its coverage area in the state.
3. Walmart Pickup Towers
- Walmart Pickup Towers are 16-feet tall, high-tech vending machines capable of fulfilling a customer’s online order in less than a minute once they arrive at the store. It’s easy to do-- once the order is ready, step up to the Pickup Tower and scan the barcode sent to your smartphone to retrieve your item. This year, Walmart plans to add 82 Pickup Towers to stores across the state.
4. Autonomous Shelf Scanner
- These scanners use automation to scan shelves and help identify where in-stock levels are low, prices are wrong, or labels are missing. In addition, the scanners provide a real-time view of inventory in the store-- information used to direct associates to the areas of the store that need the most attention. This year, Walmart plans to expand the technology to 25 additional stores across the state.
5. FAST Unloader
- Today, product is unloaded as it arrives at the store through a complex, highly manual process that has seen little innovation over the last 50 years – until now. A new system in Walmart backrooms - known as FAST-automatically scans and sorts items that come off trucks based on priority and department, allowing associates to spend less time unloading in the backroom and more time on the sales floor with customers. This year, Walmart plans to expand the technology to 137 stores across the state
6. Autonomous Floor Scrubber
- The autonomous floor scrubber uses assisted autonomy technology to perform the task of cleaning and scrubbing the concrete floors in stores. The company plans to expand the technology to 171 stores across the state this year.
Background and Context
- Capital and Innovation Expenditure: The estimated spend in the state this fiscal year (Feb. 1, 2019 – Jan. 31, 2020) is a portion of Walmart’s total capital expenditure guidance of approximately $11.0 billion for Fiscal Year 2020, which was outlined last October at the company’s annual meeting for the investment community and reiterated in February 2019.
- National Innovation Expansion Strategy: Nationwide this fiscal year Walmart plans to add an additional 1,200 autonomous floor scrubbers, 300 autonomous shelf-scanners, 1,200 FAST unloaders and 900 Pickup Towers to stores across the country. Also, the company plans to expand Online Grocery Pickup to an additional 1,000 stores and add another 800 stores across the country to the retailer’s Grocery Delivery footprint.
About Walmart in Texas
In Texas, we serve customers at 596 retail units and online through Walmart Grocery Pickup, Walmart.com and Jet.com. We are proud to employ 168,000 associates in Texas. Walmart supports local businesses, spending $52.4 billion with Texas suppliers in FYE18, which supported 285,000 Texas supplier jobs. Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are active in the communities where we live and work and invest in communities through local grants, customer engagement and associate volunteer efforts. In FYE18, we contributed more than $113.6 million in cash and in-kind donations to local nonprofits in Texas. Additional information about Walmart can be found by visiting http://corporate.walmart.com, on Facebook at http://facebook.com/walmart and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/walmart.
