Walmart on Tuesday announced that its “click-and-collect” Internet grocery shopping model was expanding to eight new cities, with additional markets to be announced in coming weeks.
Walmart said service was launching this month in Atlanta; Charlotte and Fayetteville, N.C.; Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah; Nashville; Tucson, Ariz.; and Colorado Springs. Additional markets will be added in the coming weeks.
Walmart said tests of online shopping in several cities currently underway — including in its home base of Bentonville, Ark.; San Jose, Calif.; Denver; and Huntsville, Ala. — indicated customers are increasingly demanding the convenience of online shopping, and Walmart’s huge store base provides the infrastructure to accommodate them.
"We’ve tested online grocery options — both pickup and delivery — in a handful of markets across the U.S., and each time we’ve added a new city, our customers begin using the service faster than they did in the previous one,” the company said in a blog post published Tuesday.
Walmart said shoppers using online shopping option in these cities can shop online, select a pickup time, and then pull into designated parking areas at their local stores where associates will load orders into their cars. Orders placed by 10 a.m. are available for same-day pickup. Walmart said it charges the same price for items purchased online as in stores and there is no extra fees for online service.
“With 70% of the U.S. population living within 5 miles of an existing Walmart store, this is an idea that simply makes sense for us,” the company said. “We have the locations already in place, and with our website and mobile app expertise, we’re able to combine those things in a way that helps our customers save time and still take advantage of our everyday low prices.”