Walmart Plans to Walk Into Your House to Deliver Groceries

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 30, 7:55PM EST · Published Jun 7, 5:01AM EDT

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Walmart Plans to Walk Into Your House to Deliver Groceries — © chuckcollier / Getty Images

Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT | WMT Price Prediction) wants to offer people the ultimate way to get perishable groceries. One of its workers will bring them to your house, open the door and then open the refrigerator to put in your order. It is another ratcheting up in the battle between the world’s largest retailer and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).

Walmart spelled out its reasoning by saying that since it already delivers groceries, and also offers grocery pickup, delivery to refrigerators is the next level of service. Its grocery pickup will operate out of 3,100 stores by the end of 2019. Its delivery service will operate out of 1,600.

The official announcement comes from CEO Doug McMillon and shows the importance the new plan has for Walmart. It will call the program InHome Delivery. Walmart spelled out how the system will work:

Customers place a grocery order and then select InHome Delivery and a delivery day at checkout – we take it from there!

Customers can then go about their days while a Walmart associate takes care of their grocery shopping for them – from food aisle to fridge.

At the time of delivery, associates will use smart entry technology and a proprietary, wearable camera to access the customer’s home – allowing customers to control access into their homes and giving them the ability to watch the deliveries remotely.

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The program will begin in the fall in Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Vero Beach, Florida. Walmart did not say why it picked these three cities.

Groceries are among Walmart’s single largest categories of products and services. It competes with both Amazon (which owns Whole Foods) and Kroger (the largest grocery chain in America). Amazon has used Whole Foods as leverage to move further into the grocery business. It is one way Amazon means to strengthen the breadth of its e-commerce offerings. Walmart wants to defend its grocery turf and extends its online competition with Amazon with its grocery delivery tactics. Walmart’s e-commerce business in the United States rose 43% in the last quarter of 2018. Groceries were the primary engine of the improvement. However, it remains miles behind Amazon in overall online sales in the United States.

Walmart does have an army of workers to push its grocery strategy. It dominates the list of the largest employers in each state.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.