Quick Take — Sam’s Club (Walmart): ‘At Sam’s Club we do not consider e-commerce as a separate channel’

It is a division of the Walmart Group, which had a turnover of $92.6 billion in 2024 “Sam’s” is named after its founder, Sam Walton.

E-commerce is growing by 23% (and for Walmart it weighs $150 billion) and as we see from this excerpt, the giant now delivers (ready-to-eat) food, competing with DoorDash, UberEats etc.: …almost two-thirds of Sam’s e-commerce business is now handled directly by shops, which, as [Greg ] Pulsifer (senior VP of Sam’s) acknowledges, is “the textbook definition of an omnichannel company”.

About 70 per cent of the retailer’s members also sign up online… Last month, Sam’s Club launched its Express delivery service, which promises delivery of orders within an hour

Another noteworthy innovation in e-commerce is Sam’s Club’s entry into the pizza delivery business, which began exactly one year ago. “I think the interesting thing is that the history of pizza started with roast chicken,” Pulsifer reflects. “Roast chicken was one of the most popular products for in-store pick-up and we wanted to find a way to make it available for home delivery as well, which was a challenging problem to solve.” Sam’s Club now delivers more than 22,000 pizzas per week and uses artificial intelligence to predict the busiest days for deliveries to anticipate customer demand…

Progressive Grocer

Quick Take — Usa / Uber lancia Cart Assistant: la spesa si fa con l’IA

…L’obiettivo, come riporta Food Dive, è semplificare la pianificazione degli acquisti, intercettando una tendenza in crescita: secondo il sondaggio CPG 2025 di PwC, il 40% dei consumatori prevede di utilizzare l’IA per confrontare i prodotti entro il 2030 e circa un terzo immagina decisioni d’acquisto completamente automatizzate.

Con Cart Assistant non è più necessario scorrere tra i vari prodotti e categorie: basta inserire il nome di un piatto, oppure caricare la foto di un elenco pasti scritto a mano o lo screenshot di una ricetta per ottenere automaticamente la lista degli ingredienti. Il sistema tiene conto anche di disponibilità, prezzi e promozioni del singolo punto vendita.

La funzione è pensata per evolversi nel tempo, imparando le abitudini degli utenti e suggerendo marchi preferiti e prodotti acquistati di frequente. All’interno dell’assistente è possibile modificare il carrello, sostituire articoli e rivedere l’ordine prima del checkout….

Alimentando

Uber Eats fa e-commerce da almeno 6 anni

Quick Take — DoorDash – which owns Deliveroo – ended 2025 as the leading third-party marketplace by order volume in the US food and retail sector

DoorDash makes home deliveries but also does Quick Commerce . It works with large chains from McDonald’s to Walmart. It offers service to restaurants to build their online presence and handle direct orders. In 2025 it acquired Deliveroo.

...An integration with ChatGPT now allows users to go from browsing recipes in their AI-based conversations directly to the DoorDash shopping cart..

Marketplace gross order value reached $29.7 billion in the quarter (*), an increase of 39%. Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was $213 million, up 51% year-on-year, and adjusted EBITDA grew 38% to $780 million..

The company ended 2025 with over 56 million monthly active users and over 35 million paying subscribers through its DashPass, Wolt and Deliveroo Plus subscription programmes… Progressive Grocer

(*) if you multiply by 4 it makes $118.8 billion

Compiled 25 February, updated 26 February 2026

Quick Take — Amazon lays off 16,000 employees

The latest round of job cuts brings the total number of redundancies to 30,000 in 3 months

The retailer laid off around 14,000 employees last October, bringing the total amount of redundancies to 30,000 in three months.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned of workforce reductions in June 2025 due to the company’s investment in AI.

Also on Tuesday, Amazon said it was closing its Fresh and Go grocery shops, after deciding to focus its efforts on expanding Whole Foods Market shops and same-day deliveries of fresh food from warehouses (with Amazon Now).

As a result, the company is laying off employees who helped run Fresh and Go’s operations, according to an internal memo seen by the Wall Street Journal.

Read also this article.

In Italy, small towns are emptying, even of shops: will Amazon Now provide the service in the future?

Our distributors – such as Selex and Conad – who operate consortia, and thus are unable, with some exceptions, to offer a widespread e-commerce and delivery service for basic food and household products throughout Italy – risk having to leave space and opportunity to Amazon Now over time