Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is making online grocery shopping available to more Canadian consumers.
Walmart.ca this week expanded online grocery shopping capabilities to six Toronto-area Walmart stores; another six area stores will go live with it Feb. 18, the retailer says. The program lets consumers place their grocery orders online and pick them up at the store without having to get out of their car. “When it’s cold and wet out there, customers using this service don’t have to leave their car to pick up their order,” says Simon Rodrigue, Walmart Canada senior vice president of e-commerce.
Walmart.ca began testing the program, dubbed Grocery PickUp, in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, in July. It is available in 11 stores in and around the city.
Walmart.ca charges a C$3 service fee (about US$2.20 at the current exchange rate) on each e-grocery order, and consumers can schedule their orders up to 21 days in advance. Walmart.ca says each store hired staff whose primary job is to fulfill web orders.
With the expansion, 23 of the retail chain’s approximately 400 Canadian stores offer e-grocery services. Walmart.ca generated an estimated C$482 million ($352 million) in sales in 2014, according to BMO Capital Markets.
Wal-Mart has slowly expanded e-grocery options in the United States as well, where it began testing online grocery ordering in 2011. But the retailer recently accelerated the cadence of rollouts. Walmart Grocery is now available in more than 20 market areas in the United States, including nine it added in October. The latest U.S. markets are Dallas; Houston; San Antonio; Miami; Tampa, FL; Orlando, FL; Cape Coral, FL; Oklahoma City; and Tulsa, OK.
Wal-Mart also offers e-grocery programs in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Japan, Chile and Argentina.
Wal-Mart is No. 3 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide.