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points by BugsJustFindMe 15 hours ago | 0 comments

> compete in grocery with the real giants in Walmart

In my area Walmart is on Instacart and I've often wondered how that squares with their own delivery service.

Might just speak to the competitive advantage of vertical integration. I.E “we make so much off the selling the product we don’t care if the sale originates on or off platform?” It is surprising though that they wouldn’t force users onto their service. They certainly have the power to

[–] runako 11 hours ago

> They certainly have the power to

They tried that with WalmartPay. After about a decade, they gave up[1].

Consumers have a lot of agency. A lot of people get paid access to one of the other platforms by virtue of tie-ins with their mobile carrier, or bank, or whatever. There's low incentive to pay again to use Walmart's delivery service, which will not also bring delicious Thai food for lunch.

1 - https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/21/walmart-to-finally-start-a...

[–] vostrocity 11 hours ago

Walmart asks me to sign up for their Prime equivalent every time I go on their website. I'm never going to do that.

[–] kotaKat 14 hours ago

They're very multi-modal. Walmart will send deliveries out via Instacart, their own in-house drivers (1 year+ employees internally), Spark Delivery, and even Roadie ("a UPS Company"), though Roadie jobs are for oversize things that need a pickup truck or a van like TVs from what I've seen as a Roadie driver.

[–] vostrocity 11 hours ago

I think a lot of businesses have adopted this. I've seen Papa John's orders on Roadie, but I'm sure they also use Uber Eats or DoorDash and their own in-house drivers.

[–] Marsymars 8 hours ago

My car dealership does this with shuttle rides. They've got a couple shuttles with drivers, but they'll book Uber rides for people if there's overflow.