Online shopping for groceries to be delivered or picked up took off during the pandemic of 2020. To help address this growth, Walmart and others looked at stores that only offered pickup and delivery. Now Walmart has decided to close down all of its remaining pick-up and delivery-only stores, according to Insider.
The idea is not new Walmart started to test out these stores back in 2014. The idea is you could build smaller stores that don’t need things like checkouts for customers. After online sales took off, many thought this would be the future.
Now the last two stores will close on February 17th, 2023. It seems a combination of factors led to the downfall of this idea. The first staffing of these buildings pulled staff away from Walmart stores at a time when everyone is struggling to find staffing. The second reason is recently, we have seen the growth of Walmart’s e-commerce sales slow.
Increasingly Americans are now returning to stores after avoiding them since 2020. With that, demand for online-only services has dropped. This has to be one of the main reasons Walmart is moving away from online-only stores.
Leave us a comment and let us know if you are shopping more in-person now vs a few years ago.