Walmart and Dev which is backed by Google have decided to end their online grocery partnership due to a setback in dealing with their retail rivals like Amazon.com Company. Walmart and Dev are unable to handle the delivery process and deliver the groceries to the customers at their homes.
While in 2018, the world largest retailer started to strengthen its partnership with the third party courier company so that they can reach to the consumers across 100 U.S cities, but they failed to use Lyft and Uber to deliver groceries and faced many problems while using their employees to deliver the products.
Walmart further confirmed the previous decision and said that we still partner with other seven deliver firms namely, DoorDash and Postmates. Recently in January, the company has signed up with the four delivery firm.
One of the earliest partners of Walmart was Deliv along with pilot projects of Miami and San Jose, which submitted the retailer with a termination notice of 90 days, and from January both the companies have stopped working as a team, report according to reliable people.
The person who knew the situation said that Walmart store operations were going through many problems, the retailers were unable to process fast online grocery orders.
Those people who knew about the partnership of the Walmart with the Deliv informed that the Deliv drivers were regularly waiting for 40 minutes or even more to collect the grocery orders at the time when they had arrived at stores. This could be because Walmart gives topmost priority to its customers rather than the delivery drivers especially during the working hours which led to further complication in the partnership.
Same day grocery delivery is available over more than 5,000 U.S stores and warehouse clubs and retailers seek to add more 800 stores during this year, Blakeman stated.
Deliv did not comment over the Walmart store issue. Walmart spokeswoman Molly Blakeman informed Reuters that, Deliv and retailers with mutual concern have decided to end the partnership. Like with any other project the intention is to learn. We have finally come to an end with Deliv although Deliv’s platform is good for delivering products but eventually was not the best platform for us as of now.
Deliv has programmed same day deliveries by using gig drivers and a model which will help to speed up the ordering process and will also help to estimate the demand and strong volumes. Walmart is currently working with the restaurant delivery firms; the firm will deliver the order whenever it is generated, according to the source.
The order of the volume was less in most of the markets and orders were supposed to be delivered over long distances which resulted in the loss of money for both firms Deliv and Walmart, sources from both reported.
Blakeman stated that regarding order volume there were no issues in the market.
When the partnership was affected with Deliv, we hoped that the demand could be much stronger than as of now, sources informed.
While in October, Deliv raised around $40 million from investors in a new round of financing, it includes investors such as Alphabet Inc’s Google and United Parcel Service. Later in December, Deliv signed a deal with another 20 new U.S retailers which includes Nordstrom and Nike Inc.
Nearly around 1,000 of orders can be processed and delivered by Deliv within an hour. Walmart in San Jose used to generate hundreds of orders per week, and they did have issues while processing the orders through the stores. Meanwhile, Walmart is focusing over the problems and working closely to resolve it so that they can process orders fast at the stores, the sources reported.
Deliv currently operates in the U.S across 1,400 cities, through freelance drivers who deliver the products on the same day over a price for a wide range of retailers, mainly from Home Depot Inc. to Kohl’s Corp.
From 2017 onwards the Walmart has completed its separate grocery delivery test, which they had partnered with smart security company August Home, Deliv for keyless entries basically for shoppers home and to deliver the groceries of the customers directly into their refrigerator.
