Walmart Takes On AmazonFresh With Grocery Pickup Kiosk

Hopefully AmazonFresh enjoyed its two weeks as the only drive-up grocery pickup kiosk in town, because Walmart is now testing one of its own — and it’s likely to give Amazon a run for its grocery pick up money.

Walmart is testing the service at a Walmart Super Center in Oklahoma City.

Like AmazonFresh customers, Walmart grocery shoppers can order online or by app and opt to pick up the order from the kiosk when it’s convenient— even in the middle of the night, because the kiosk is automatic and open 24/7 at the supermarket.

Employees do the work of walking around the supermarket, selecting items and bagging them. The bags are then loaded into the kiosk. When shoppers arrive, they punch in their five-digit pickup code, and the machine will hand them their bags — think 20-by-80-foot vending machine.

The kiosk can fulfill hundreds of orders per day, according to Walmart Spokesman Scott Markley. Online shoppers have access to all the same items at all the same prices as supermarket shoppers, including more than 30,000 options in fresh produce, meats, dairy products, organic groceries and more.

Walmart isn’t new to the world of online grocery shopping, and Markley said the ordering process wouldn’t change. Customers will still place and pay for their orders online, and those eCommerce orders will still be filled by associates who are trained to hand-pick the freshest produce and choicest cuts of meat.

The only difference will be that, instead of walking around the supermarket for an hour, customers can retrieve their order from the grocery store kiosk in under a minute and be on their way.

The setup has already seen success at Walmart locations in the U.K.

Unlike AmazonFresh, Walmart does have a minimum purchase requirement of $30 to use the grocery pickup kiosk, though the service itself is free.

Amazon, on the other hand, offers the AmazonFresh grocery pickup option as part of an add-on to its Amazon Prime membership, so even though there’s no order minimum, users are paying extra for the service. Amazon Prime costs $99 a year or $10.99 a month, and the AmazonFresh add-on tacks on an additional $14.99 per month for a total of $25.98 per month.