Walmart have announced the introduction of in-home deliveries into their customers’ kitchen or garage fridge in the US. The service will launch this autumn for more than 1 million customers across three cities including Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Vero Beach, Florida.
Walmart in-home is a new service designed to help customers save time and offer another convenient choice for grocery shopping. The service delivers groceries even when customers can’t be home. Here’s how it works:
- Customers place a grocery order and then select ‘inhome delivery’ and a delivery day at the checkout.
- A Walmart associate takes care of their grocery shopping for customers – 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.
Walmart say that the delivery staff will go through an extensive training program to prepare them to “enter customers’ homes with the same care and respect with which they would treat a friend’s or family’s home” – and how to select the freshest grocery items and organise the food in the refrigerator.
Later this year, in-home service will also accept returns for items purchased on Walmart.com. Customers will be able to leave them on the counter and their inhome delivery associate will return the items on their behalf.
Walmart say that the move is part of their ecommerce strategy aimed to innovate for the future and leverage their unique assets.
