The Walmart store on Carl Boyer Drive this week was one of 26 in California to introduce a grocery pickup service.
The service is now available at 36 Walmart stores in California and more than 800 of its 4,692 stores nationally. The Santa Clarita Walmart Supercenter on Carl Boyer Drive is one of four stores in Los Angeles County to offer this new service, in addition to two stores in Palmdale and one in Rosemead.
“Our customers have told us that grocery pickup is a game changer. They are now able to complete their grocery shopping in a matter of minutes – between errands or on their way home – without ever getting out of the car,” said Susan Vanderlip, Walmart’s eCommerce market coach, in a statement.
The service includes the full range of groceries available at the store, around 30,000 items. Mos general merchandise is not available through the service, with the exception of about 300 back-to-school items.
Prices are the same as for shoppers inside the store, and there is no fee for the service.
The online shopping and pickup service will expand to other area Walmart stores, said spokesperson Tiffany Wilson, though no timetable has been set. As part of a remodeling project, the Carl Boyer Drive store will add an expanded pickup area.
It is also adding classroom space it will use to hold two-week training sessions for hourly supervisors and assistant managers.
Shoppers enter their zip code to find the nearest store with the pickup service and select items on the retailer’s website or on its app. At checkout, they choose a pickup time. Personal shoppers fill the orders.
Walmart requires a $20 minimum purchase and accepts only credit and debit cards, not cash, coupons, gift cards or PayPal.
Walmart’s expansion of the pickup service is part of a broader expansion of its internet presence. Earlier this year it bought menswear online retailer Bonobos, and it owns Jet.com, Shoebuy, ModCloth and Moosejaw.
Walmart is the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer with more than 140 million customers a week in the United States, revenue of $485.9 billion and more than 2.3 million employees worldwide.
It faces increased competition from Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, and other web-based stores.
In addition to the online shopping/pickup service, Walmart has experimented with a service that has employees on their way home from work drop off items customers have purchased online. This takes advantage of the fact that seventy percent of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a Walmart store and ninety percent live within 10 miles.
