Taking a page from Amazon's last-mile delivery playbook, Walmart is planning to offer a new in-home delivery service.
Starting this autumn, Walmart.com customers in select US cities will notice an option to have their groceries delivered and placed directly into their refrigerators. Called the InHome service, it will use Walmart workers wearing wearable cameras and driving Walmart vehicles. It will also use some sort of “smart entry technology" so its workers can enter your home while you're away.
Walmart said you'll be able to control the whole experience, by remotely allowing entry and watching the deliveries. Walmart's Its InHome service will be available to over one million customers in Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Vero Beach, Florida. However, details such as the delivery fee - let alone how exactly Walmart employees will gain entry to your home - are unknown.
Walmart is saying that its employees will receive loads of training to ensure they “treat customers’ homes with the same care and respect with which they treat a friend’s or family’s home". They’ll also be taught how to organise refrigerators. Plus, later this year, InHome delivery associates will be able to pick up items for return, if they're left on the customer's counter for the associates to grab.
"Now we can serve customers not just in the last mile, but in the last 15 feet,” said Walmart in a statement. Keep in mind Amazon launched a similar service a couple years ago, called Key, which uses smart door locks for an entry technology.