Quick Take — Walmart expands into home delivery: partnership with three fast-food chains

Retail giantWalmart Inc.is expanding its restaurant food home-delivery service beyond its own stores for the first time. According to initial reports fromBloomberg, the retailer will begin offering delivery in 30 minutes or less for Papa John’s orders in thousands of locations across the United States, following a brief pilot scheme in selected markets this autumn.

Hungry customers will be able to order from the pizza chain, which offers home delivery and takeaway, via walmart.com or the Walmart mobile app, in the section dedicated to restaurants. Meals can be ordered individually or added to the online shopping basket alongside other items, using Walmart’sExpress deliveryservice. Deliveries will be carried out by independent couriers via the Spark Delivery app…

Other partner restaurants that have signed delivery agreements with Walmart include theSubway sandwich chainand Dunkin’, through a partnership with their parent company, Inspire Brands…

Progressive Grocer

Below: Subway is a sandwich chain that is very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries. Dunkin’ Donuts is such a strong brand that, in addition to its fast-food outlets, it also has own-brand products distributed through US supermarket chains.

Quick Take — Amazon: e-commerce deliveries of perishable fresh produce set to rise by 50 per cent in 2026

“We have adapted a number of our existing Same-Day facilities with specialised temperature zones – ambient, chilled and frozen – and we plan to adapt many more over time. If your order includes frozen pizza, yoghurt and English muffins, three different team members prepare your order simultaneously, one in each zone, which also makes it easier to unpack when it arrives. Orders for perishable groceries are also fulfilled by existing fulfilment centres that were designed from the ground up to handle perishable groceries…”

Six (6) fresh items feature in the top twenty on the site, which serves 150 million people and is now the second-largest food retailer in the US behind Walmart.

The term ‘groceries’, which usually refers to everyday consumer goods, also includes fresh produce for Amazon.

Quick Take — Walmart has missed its quarterly like-for-like sales estimates for the first time in at least five years

On Thursday, highlighting the strain that rising fuel costs are placing on consumer spending, its shares fell by 8 per cent in early trading.

The world’s largest retailer has slightly raised its annual sales and profit targets, but said it expects fuel prices to remain stable, leading to $2 billion in additional fuel-related costs on top of the original forecasts.

E-commerce sales in the US rose by 24 per cent, whilst Walmart Connect recorded a 43 per cent increase in turnover.

Average spend per transaction rose by 1.1 per cent, slowing sharply compared with the previous year .

Quick Take — Are retail sales stagnating? Advertising is on the rise at Walmart

Next Thursday, Walmart is expected to provide an update on its sales and profitability figures, with like-for-like sales growth below 4 per cent for the first time since 2024, mainly due to petrol prices (To cope with these challenging times, Walmart has reduced the prices of 7,000 items in its range).

Bucking the trend, Walmart Connect’s advertising revenue is up by 44 per cent; whilst this represents an infinitesimal fraction of total turnover ($713 billion), it accounts for a third of operating profit (EBIT).

Walmart has identified AI as the next phase of growth for Walmart Connect, as more and more consumers use AI chatbots to search for deals. The retailer has begun testing adverts within its AI shopping assistant, Sparky…

Almost a third of consumer searches now originate from AI models, according to data from digital commerce consultancy Flywheel…

Amazon is further ahead in transforming its proprietary chatbot, now called Alexa for Shopping, into a new advertising channel, but Walmart’s 2024 acquisition of smart-TV manufacturer Vizio has enabled it to expand Connect beyond its website and into its television streaming services.

The disparity in growth between Walmart’s retail and advertising sales is evident in this Reuters table

Drafted on 18 August, updated on 19 August 2026

Quick Take — US: how consumer spending has changed over the last two years

In 2024, beef purchases accounted for a third of all meat purchases. This year, shoppers have bought far less: just 20 per cent of the total.

The amount of chicken they bought has increased: from 41.9 per cent to 47.5 per cent in 2026.

The average shop spend has also risen because shoppers have shifted towards membership-based discount stores (such as Sam’s Club – which is owned by Walmart – or Costco, for example): in 2024, the average shop spend was $66.13, compared with $72.31 this year

The New York Times

Below: beef from Costco.