Last week the Foothill Ranch WalMart held a ribbon cutting for the opening of their curbside pickup service. Mayor Voigts and Councilman Robinson joined me in welcoming the new service.
Our Lake Forest store is the first in Orange County and only one of 800 nationwide to offer this service. It’s pretty easy to use –
- Go to Walmart/com/grocery
- Register (if you’re not already registered)
- Go shopping
- Reserve a pick up time
- Show up and park in 1 of 6 reserved stalls
- Pop your trunk
When I went shopping at 10 am I was able to book times between 4 pm and 8 pm.
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Right now the store is handling about 100 orders a day for pickup. This requires personal shoppers and also considerable storage space. By the end of the year they hope to be handling 300 orders per day.
Even items milk and cheese are available online and for pickup. The only item that wasn’t available for pickup was beer. That being said, it still saves time, so all I had to do was go to the store, get my beer, and then stop at the pick-up on the way out.
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Another thing I liked about using the online system is that I could get product information on my PC which was easy to read, versus trying to read it in the store where most product info is so small it’s difficult to read.
I decided to try to free shipping option. I expected to get it the same day so I placed my order early in the morning, only to find out it would take 4 days to arrive. No big deal. I didn’t need any of those items right away, so I placed my order.
Placing the order was simple. It arrived in two parts, two days early.
Walmart’s online options, with free shipping and free curbside pickup are meant to compete with the movement of Amazon into the grocery space as a result of their purchase of Whole Foods. I don’t think WalMart has anything to worry about. The client list is different, and as long as WalMart executes well, they will continue to be America’s leading retailer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.
Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on Sept 9 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.
