Walmart is rolling out grocery home-delivery service to Vancouver and Battle Ground, joining a growing number of local supermarkets that have jumped into the delivery arena. Service began Thursday throughout the Portland metro area.
“Online [ordering and] pickup has been successful; there’s a lot of opportunity for growth,” says Justin Smyrak, Walmart’s market e-commerce manager for Southwest Washington and northern Oregon. “We just want to offer customers more options.”
The grocery chain already offers online ordering with curbside pickup in the Vancouver area from its 104th Avenue, 192nd Avenue and Battle Ground stores, but customers who visit walmart.com/grocery or use the Walmart Grocery app will now be able to choose between in-store pickup and home delivery when placing an order.
Customers can specify a one-hour window for delivery and a delivery fee is charged during the online checkout process, so no money is exchanged at the door. Walmart’s program charges a $9.95 flat fee per delivery, with no required subscription. Delivery service eligibility is based on ZIP codes rather than proximity to a specific Walmart stores.
Not just groceries
The home-delivery market is growing rapidly and grocers aren’t the only retailers getting involved.
Home Depot announced Wednesday that it will offer same-day and next-day home delivery in the Portland area for some of its most popular items such as power tools and gardening supplies. Portland is one of 35 metro areas included in the rollout.
The service is billed as an expansion of Home Depot’s home-delivery options for items such as large appliances, but the company is also partnering with delivery businesses Roadie and Deliv for the smaller items.
Retailer Petco also offers home-delivery services in the Vancouver area through a partnership with Instacart.
“It’s ZIP code-determined, so the customer will want to go to the app and enter their ZIP code to check if delivery is available in that part of Vancouver,” Smyrak says.
The delivery program was announced earlier this year and is currently available in approximately 50 metro areas nationwide, and Walmart says it plans to reach 100 areas by the end of the year. The Vancouver rollout coincides with the debut of the service throughout the Portland metro area.
Walmart is partnering with home-delivery service Postmates to implement the program in the Vancouver area. Postmates is one of several competing on-demand services that have launched in recent years such as Instacart and GrubHub. The rapid growth of the market has prompted many retailers in Vancouver and Portland to offer delivery options.
The relationships between other stores and third-party delivery services vary. Some retailers, such as QFC and Natural Grocers, partner with Instacart to fulfill home delivery orders, relying on Instacart’s “Personal Shoppers” to both build and deliver the orders.
In Walmart’s case, the orders are built internally and the partner service is only called in for deliveries. The delivery orders are treated just like customer pickup orders, Smyrak says, until the point when they’re loaded into a car.
“We crowdsource deliveries,” Smyrak said. “We do all of the shopping and loading up the car. The only difference is we’re not loading a customer car.”
Safeway rolled out its own online shopping and home delivery service in Vancouver starting in 2001, according to Safeway spokesperson Jill McGinnis, and the chain also began partnering with Instacart this year, which shares the same catalog of delivery items from Safeway stores. Albertsons stores began using the Safeway delivery service after the two brands merged in 2015.
But the Instacart and Safeway services operate separately, McGinnis says; orders placed through Instacart are built and delivered by Instacart’s Personal Shoppers, while orders placed through the Albertsons or Safeway websites are built and delivered by Safeway employees.
Instacart lists Safeway, QFC, Costco, Natural Grocers, Fred Meyer, Whole Foods Market, Albertsons and New Seasons as being available for home delivery in Vancouver, although deliveries from some of those stores are limited to only certain parts of Vancouver based on the customer’s ZIP code.
QFC home delivery through Instacart, for example, is not currently available in downtown Vancouver’s 98660 ZIP code, but is listed as available in east Vancouver’s 98683 code.
