ALEXANDRIA, Va.—DoorDash will no longer partner with Walmart on grocery delivery, reports The Verge. DoorDash reportedly cancelled the agreement earlier this month, saying the partnership “was no longer mutually beneficial” and that it wants to “focus on its long-term customer relationships.” DoorDash gave Walmart a 30-day notice.
The partnership between DoorDash and Walmart allowed DoorDash to deliver groceries to customers who ordered them through Walmart’s site. It began in 2018.
“We have agreed to part ways with DoorDash,” Walmart spokesperson Leigh Stidham said in a statement to The Verge. “We’d like to thank DoorDash for their partnership and support of our customers the past several years.”
The Verge reports that it’s unclear whether customers will be able to order groceries via the DoorDash app. Currently, customers are unable to do this; however, customers can order Walmart groceries through Instacart.
“We’d like to thank Walmart for their partnership and are looking forward to continuing to build and provide support for merchants in the years ahead with our leading Marketplace and Platform offerings,” DoorDash spokesperson Ali Musa said in a statement to The Verge.
Walmart has been focusing on its last-mile strategy. The company’s pickup and delivery capacity grew 20% last year, and it plans a 35% increase this year. It’s expanding its Spark delivery driver network, and The Verge reports that Spark accounts for 75% of its deliveries and services 84% of households in the U.S. Walmart is also working on its GoLocal program, which is a white-label delivery-as-a-service business focused on providing third-party retailers and brands an affordable local delivery solution.
Additionally, Walmart is scaling its InHome service, which transports customers’ purchases straight into their kitchen or garage refrigerator, as well as picking up Walmart.com returns. The service is now available to 30 million U.S. homes, up from six million, and hiring 3,000 additional associates to captain an electric fleet of delivery vehicles.
Walmart has said it is honing in on delivering convenience to its customers.
“We’ve watched in real time as people foundationally changed their shopping habits, spurred not just by a global pandemic, but by the expectation for availability to also mean convenience,” wrote Walmart. “That need for convenience led to six times the number of customers using delivery in the fourth quarter compared to pre-pandemic levels, signaling a huge change in how our customers shop.”
According to NACS’ “Last Mile Fulfillment in Convenience Retail” report, 61% of retailers are satisfied with their third-party delivery partners. Concerns include high fees, little access to consumer data, difficulties delivering age-restricted products and service and operational issues.
Read more about these challenges and what c-stores are doing to make delivery work for their businesses in “Delivering Convenience” in the December 2021 issue of NACS Magazine.