Walmart is a hard place to shop. The long—seemingly endless—aisles and big-box lighting do not make a trip to Walmart an enjoyable time. Is there a better way?
Walmart has submitted plans in a Chicago suburb to create a pickup only location. There are many Walmart stores today that offer pickup options, but they also have traditional retail sales areas inside. The new facility would simply be a warehouse with a pickup area for online orders. Tom Ryan reports at Retail Wire:
Walmart predicts the number of pickup trips at this facility, which includes 24 stalls, will be about 180 per hour or 1,960 daily, according to Supermarket News. The retailer will also make home deliveries from the site — an estimated 30 per day. Thirty to 40 employees are expected to run the facility.
Walmart spokesperson Ann Hatfield told the Chicago Tribune the proposed facility gives customers “yet another location close to where they live or close to where they work where they can go online, order their groceries and pick it up at this location. They don’t have to get out of their car.”
Walmart has significantly ramped up investments in pickup and delivery options. At the end of Q2, Walmart U.S. had more than 1,800 grocery pickup locations, more than 320 stores offering grocery delivery and more than 325 pickup towers, which focus on general merchandise. Grocery delivery is expected to reach 40 percent of the U.S. population by year-end.
Surveys show that consumers prefer outside pickup. It is also thought that the pickup-only concept addresses perishable item challenges, out-of-stock risks and inefficiencies from having associates fetching orders across store aisles.
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