Walmart+, the retailer’s lower cost alternative to Amazon Prime offering same-day delivery of groceries and other items, is making its service more appealing with today’s launch of a new perk. The company says that starting on Friday, December 4, it will remove the $35 shipping minimum on orders from Walmart.com for its members. However, this doesn’t apply to the same-day orders of groceries or other items fulfilled by Walmart stores, but rather online shopping where orders are placed through Walmart’s traditional e-commerce channels.
That means there’s no longer a minimum order requirement on the next-day and two-day shipping that’s offered on items shipped from Walmart.com, no matter the basket total. The change, arriving only a couple of months after Walmart+’s launch, positions the new program as more of a true alternative to Amazon Prime, as Prime’s biggest perk has always been its free fast shipping service that encourages consumers to shop online without worrying about minimum order sizes.
Meanwhile, Walmart+’s biggest perk until now had been its same-day delivery service, with a particular focus on groceries — similar to Instacart or Amazon Fresh. The service didn’t charge fees on same-day grocery if the orders were at least $35, and this aspect continues today.
The Walmart+ program itself grew out of Walmart’s Delivery Unlimited, an earlier version of the service that had also involved having Walmart store staff pick orders which are handed off to delivery partners. In the past, those partners have included Postmates (now acquired by Uber), DoorDash, Roadie, and Point Pickup, among others. More recently, Walmart acquired last-mile delivery operation JoyRun, to bring more of its delivery logistics business in-house.
Unlike some grocery delivery services, Walmart’s advantage in same-day is that it could also fulfill orders of other everyday items from its store shelves, not just food and household goods. When Walmart+ launched in mid-September, it promised same-day delivery of over 160,000 items.
The program also includes a small handful of other perks like fuel discounts at nearly 2,000 Walmart, Murphy USA and Murphy Express stations and access to Scan & Go to skip the checkout lines when shopping in-store.
Today, Walmart said it’s also expanding the fuel savings to over 500 Sam’s Club gas stations, too.
While Amazon Prime has expanded over the years to include all sorts of benefits, like free music and streaming video, e-books, audiobooks, gaming perks, and more, Walmart+ so far remains focused on its core features — like shipping benefits and cost savings. And coming in at $98 per year (or $12.95/mo), it’s cheaper than Prime’s $119 per year membership, which could appeal to consumers only interested in free delivery.
Walmart, like many large retailers, has benefitted by the acceleration of e-commerce driven by the pandemic. The company, in its third quarter earnings, reported U.S. e-commerce sales were up by 79% in the quarter, with earnings of $1.34 a share on revenue that was up 5.2% year-over-year to $134.7 billion.
So far, Walmart has declined to share how many customers have signed up for Walmart+ much to investors’ dismay. (One third-party estimate puts it at 19M members, however). The retailer notes the program is available at over 4,700 stores, including 2,800 stores that offer delivery — the latter which reaches 70% of the U.S.
