New York City has been a hard nut to crack for retail giant Walmart, but soon the company will have a physical presence in the city. Not a store, but a fulfillment center in the Bronx for Jet.com, an online grocer founded in 2015 that Walmart acquired the next year for $3B.
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Jet.com will open the facility this fall, which will help it expand further into same-day and next-day grocery deliveries in the Big Apple, the Wall Street Journal reports.
With affluent New Yorkers in mind, the company will also deliver Apple products from the new facility, according to CNBC.
Locally, the competition in online grocery delivery is keen. New York is already awash with services that offer the fast delivery of consumer items, including Fresh Direct, Instacart, Google Express and, naturally, Amazon.
That retail giant offers some food and other items in a one- to two-hour window through its Prime Now service. It also has physical Whole Foods locations throughout the city — nine in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.
Walmart's closest physical stores near New York City are in North Bergen and Secaucus, New Jersey.
The founder of Jet.com, Marc Lore, is now the head of Walmart's U.S. commercial business. He has been working to expand the company's delivery services into urban areas which Walmart has had limited success in penetrating, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Though a subsidiary of Walmart, Jet.com does not associate itself with the retailer on its website in any obvious way. Jet.com does promise low prices, however, and uses an algorithm to match orders to third-party retailers that offer lower prices for some items.
Nationwide, the demand for grocery delivery is expanding. In response, Walmart plans to expand its grocery delivery service to more than 100 major metros by the end of 2018.
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