Walmart piloting last mile delivery with Uber, Lyft and Deliv
Walmart has revealed that it is piloting a last mile delivery test with Uber, Lyft and Deliv.
In a notice posted on Walmart’s blog on Friday (3 June), Michael Bender, EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Walmart Global ecommerce, said: “Walmart will start with tests of grocery delivery through Uber in Phoenix and Lyft in Denver, which we expect to start within the next two weeks. This is in addition to a very quiet Sam’s Club pilot that started in March with Deliv involving delivery of general merchandise and grocery for business members in Miami.”
Bender explained how the service will work: “A customer in one of the test locations places their grocery order online and selects a delivery window. Our personal shoppers, highly-trained Walmart associates, will carefully select and prepare their order. Then, our team may request a driver from one of these services to come to the store, pick up the customer’s order, and take it directly to the customer’s location. It’s all seamless to the customer. They pay us our normal $7-10 delivery charge online, and make no payment to the driver. We’ll also let them know their order is being delivered by a driver from Uber or Lyft.”
Bender added: “We’re thrilled about the possibility of delivering new convenient options to our customers, and about working with some transformative companies in this test. We’ll start small and let our customers guide us, but testing new things like last-mile delivery allows us to better evaluate the various ways we can best serve our customers how, when and where they need us.”
Interestingly, another US retail giant, Target, recently announced that it was ending a pilot test with Curbside – the company which runs a service whereby shoppers place their orders online and then Curbside people source the items and bring the package to the customers’ cars outside the store. With Walmart’s Uber, Lyft and Deliv pilots, customers get their products delivered to their homes.
