Wal-Mart to offer free grocery pickup in some cities

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it would soon roll out a free service that would allow customers to buy groceries online and pick up orders in store parking lots.

According to Reuters, the service will first be available in Atlanta; Charlotte and Fayetteville, N.C.; Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah; Nashville, Tenn.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Colorado Springs, Colo. Wal-Mart said it would extend service to more markets in the coming weeks.

Wal-Mart faces some competition in grocery delivery from Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Fresh – operating in Seattle, New York, Philadelphia and southern California – and a pending partnership between Target Corp. and Instacart Inc.

The online grocery industry – currently worth about $10.9 billion in the U.S. – is expected to grow 9.6 percent through December 2019.

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