Whether we’re scribbling our shopping lists on scraps of
paper or keeping inventory on our phones, many of us find it challenging to add
in one critical thing: finding the time to shop. But what if you could get your grocery
shopping done quickly and easily, without having to add more time or take away
from other activities that you’d rather spend your time on? That’s precisely what we’re doing with grocery pickup,
a service
I wrote about last year. Saving time – and saving money – are both
incredibly important to our customers and with our online grocery shopping
option, we help them achieve both.
Judging from many of the reactions on social media, customers who use the service are very excited about it:
At the start of this month, we offered free grocery pickup in more than 20 markets, and we’ve continued to see more and more customers use it across the country each week. By the end of April, we’ll expand the service to eight additional new markets, and we’ll add even more locations throughout the year. Here’s where we’re going with it this month:
- We’re launching free grocery pickup in Kansas City; Boise, Idaho; Richmond and Virginia Beach, Virginia; Austin, Texas; Provo, Utah; Daphne, Alabama; and Charleston, South Carolina.
- We’re also doubling the number of store pickup locations in markets like Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, where this convenient service is already offered.
Customers tell us they’re excited about online grocery because they’re putting the time they’re saving back into meaningful parts of their lives (like spending time helping their kids with homework or having a date-night with their spouse). They have the option of shopping whenever and wherever they want – adding to ongoing lists all week, or placing a quick order through our mobile app – putting them in control of the entire process, all the way down to when they pick up. Even better is that our grocery pickup service is 100% free to use. We offer the same everyday low prices found in our stores, and there are no hidden fees.
Ninety percent of our customers are repeat users, and more than 90 percent of our online baskets include fresh grocery items (dairy, produce or meat). That’s exciting because it means that our personal shoppers – associates who are carefully selected and highly trained to pick these foods as if they were choosing for their own families – must be working hard to get things right while strengthening the trust customers place in us to shop for them.
Our personal shoppers are full-time Walmart associates and fully dedicated to this service. They get to know our customers by name and learn what they like.
While grocery pickup isn’t a service our customers specifically asked us to provide, we’re hearing that for many of them, it’s a service they now can’t live without. That’s why I love my job. There’s a ton of satisfaction I take away knowing that we’re helping people by making shopping faster, easier and more convenient. And we do that only as Walmart can, by bringing together digital shopping experiences with our physical stores.
Helping customers save time and money has always been our
mission and from their reaction to our service, we’re on the right path.