Walmart’s GoLocal Service Reaches Key Milestones

Following its initial rollout in August 2021, Walmart is celebrating the first anniversary of its white-label delivery-as-a-service business Walmart GoLocal. The retailer hit a notable milestone with the service just last week when it reached more than 1 million deliveries completed through Walmart GoLocal.

“We saw an opportunity to serve retailers who could benefit from Walmart’s scale, delivery infrastructure and world-class operations,” wrote Harsit Patel, VP and general manager of Walmart GoLocal, in a company blog post. “Since then, Walmart GoLocal has been focused on helping our clients reach their customers through local delivery — whether they are a large enterprise looking to find efficiencies, improve coverage and lower costs for delivery or a small business seeking to build out and scale their delivery infrastructure for the first time.”

Since its inception, Walmart GoLocal has scaled its platform to serve clients at thousands of pickup locations and deliver products in as quickly as 30 minutes. The grocer is also on track to reach 5,000 locations by the end of 2021.

Partnerships revealed over the past year include one with third-party aggregation and orchestration software company Delivery Solutions and another with Cognetry Labs to help provide an integrated white-label turnkey e-commerce and delivery solution to midsize and independent grocery retailers. Categories covered by the service now span clothing and apparel, automotive, grocery and alcohol, restaurants, consumer electronics, hardware and DIY, floral, warehousing and fulfillment, and delivery orchestration. 

“It’s energizing to collaborate with our clients — regardless of where they are in their delivery journey — and find new ways to support them and their business,” wrote Patel. “Moving forward, we remain focused on serving our clients by evolving and expanding our delivery infrastructure offerings.”

Continued Patel: “We’re going to continue introducing additional services under Walmart GoLocal that bring our retail, logistics and e-commerce expertise and infrastructure to life for other businesses and create opportunities.” 

Walmart GoLocal has been a lucrative alternative revenue stream for the retailer as it leverages Walmart’s investments in pickup/delivery into third-party sales opportunities.

“We’re expanding our other revenue streams, including our white-label delivery service, Walmart GoLocal,” Walmart Chief Merchandising Officer Charles Redfield told Progressive Grocer earlier this year. “With clients such as The Home Depot, Chico’s FAS and Cognetry Labs, Walmart is leveraging its capacity and capabilities to help businesses of all sizes deliver products to customers across the country at an affordable price.”

Walmart is further increasing its own delivery efforts by purchasing 4,500 all-electric delivery vehicles from high-tech advanced mobility company Canoo. The new vehicles will be driven by Walmart associates and used to deliver online orders ranging from groceries to general merchandise, with the additional potential of being used by Walmart GoLocal.

Each week, approximately 230 million customers and members visit Walmart’s more than 10,500 stores and numerous e-commerce websites under 46 banners in 24 countries. The company employs approximately 2.3 million associates worldwide. Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart U.S. is No. 1 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.