Customer Sydney Gholston went into one of our Kentucky stores to purchase some Thanksgiving turkeys for the nonprofit she works for, but left with an unbelievable story to boot. While she was in line to pay, she struck up a conversation with a friendly gentleman who offered to pay for her order. The man? Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight, who was in town filming a movie. It goes to show, you never know who you may run into in our stores!
This week, we worked with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and several other companies to feed Thanksgiving dinner to more than 35,000 New Yorkers across the state. Each meal included turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, vegetables, cranberry sauce and potatoes. We were honored to be a part of this effort along with Wegmans, FreshDirect and The Coca-Cola Company.
One of the many reasons Walmart.com is great is the expanded assortment – the site offers additional items that aren’t available in store. But would you expect to find a Cartier watch or Prada pumps? You can now! These are just a small sampling of the luxury items you can find through our third-party Marketplace sellers. Earlier this year, our Marketplace had Air Yeezy’s for sale. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go update my Christmas wish list.
Food waste is a big issue in the U.S., with an estimated $29 billion thrown away each year. This week, we were excited to see that Walmart was named to the inaugural class of the U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions – an honor established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency to recognize businesses and organizations that have committed to reduce food loss and waste in their operations 50% by 2030. We’ve been doing a number of things to help reduce food waste, including finding a use for fruits and vegetables that might be oddly shaped or have minor blemishes; switching date labels on our Great Value nonperishable products to a “Best if used by” format; and donating extra food to local food banks. Our goal is to reach 0% net waste and donate 4 billion meals by 2020.
By now, we’re tucking into leftovers and looking over the great deals we scored from Black Friday shopping. I’m most excited about the 55” plush bear I picked up. Our associates were in stores this week working hard to make sure families across the country had the items they needed to put on a great Thanksgiving feast, and they were ready for you when you came out to shop. This week, we sold 150 million pounds of turkey and ham, and televisions were once again one of the most popular items shopped. The only thing left to do is grab a nap before Cyber Monday kicks off!