ORDERING IN
Get a look inside the Walmart in-home delivery service process
Delivering groceries to people’s doorsteps has a set of dos and don’ts. Stepping inside and stocking a customer’s fridge brings another set of responsibilities — and cautions.
Nicholas Burmaster, a Walmart in-home delivery associate, recalls the time he made a stop at one house and heard a dog barking inside. He assumed it was in a crate. When he opened the door, the dog was roaming freely.
It could have been a bad situation.
“But as soon as I went in and it saw me, it went flying up the stairs,” Mr. Brumaster said. “It was over a hundred pounds, but it was a big scaredy-cat.”
Avoiding fraught encounters like this is why Walmart asks that if you request in-home delivery of milk, asparagus and whatever else you plan for dinner, you have your pet in a crate or in a separate room during the drop-off window of time. Or request a drop-off in a garage fridge if you have one.
Walmart has been offering inhome delivery at 10 stores in the Pittsburgh area since October. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retail giant has also launched the service in Kansas City (Missouri and Kansas) and Vero Beach, Fla.
Walmart may be the only retailer at the moment offering to have your apples and cheese waiting in the fridge when you come home, but grocers across the country are duking it out for customers — either in their brick-and-mortar stores or through their online services. Many offer click-and-collect services that allow you to pick up your order at the store. O’Harabased Giant Eagle also offers delivery to the doorstep, as do Target and Aldi.
And e-commerce giant Amazon offers to drop off packages inside homes, garages or car trunks. But not groceries. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Whole Foods offers delivery to shoppers’ doorsteps and in-store pickup.
The three cities that Walmart first selected to venture into customer homes were chosen because the residents were active users of online grocery shopping while also
representing different demographics.
“Pittsburgh is a city where we see a lot of early adopters for tech,” said Whitney Pegden, vice president and general manager of Walmart In-Home Delivery.
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Burmaster arrived at an empty home in Sewickley. In this case, the home — half of a duplex — was intentionally vacant. Walmart rents the real estate for training, product demonstrations and testing.
At the door, he did a temperature check on the chilled and frozen items, slipped on disposable booties over his shoes and donned a camera that would livestream his time in the house. In a non-test scenario, customers could watch the video in real time through an app.
Mr. Burmaster was given a one-time access code to enter the house. If the code isn’t entered and the camera isn’t recording, a smart lock device won’t unlock. It’s $49.95 for a smart lock device, but installation is free.
“As you can imagine, the product is all about the people and in-home associates, so we take the training and hiring very seriously,” Ms. Pegden said. “We want to make sure we’re sending them into homes with respect.”
The delivery associates have worked an average of 10 years for Walmart and are required to work a minimum of two years and pass a background check.
The most frequently ordered items? The ones we typically pick up ahead of a bad snowstorm: milk, eggs, bread, toilet paper.
So far enough customers have been willing to try the service that the company is going ahead with it.
Walmart hasn’t announced expansion plans into other cities, but it expects to soon, Ms. Pegden said.
“These three cities aren’t a test with an ending. It’s part of a larger offering. We actually ran a six-month pilot in New Jersey before we launched [in these three cities], and that served as our real testing ground. We had a lot of confidence in this.”