Physical stores matter more than ever to Walmart. The retailer’s expansive physical footprint has aided the company, according to executive vice president and chief administration officer JP Suarez. “Customers want a store,” he told ICSC president and CEO Tom McGee on a recent ICSC Connect Virtual Series episode. “It’s an anchor for the community. It gives the community the belief that they’re going to be taken care of. Governments are now coming back to us and saying, ‘We need your stores here, and we need you to be a part of the community.’”
The retailer is adding services and reconfiguring stores to keep up with customer preferences, such as the surge in omnichannel shopping since COVID-19 began. The company has hired more “pickers” to shop for online customers and has dedicated more space for storing online orders awaiting pickup. “We’re starting to be able to meet most of the demand that is there, but it’s two to three times what we had planned for,” he said. “Customers are saying, ‘That’s a service that I want now during COVID, and I’m going to want it when it’s done, too.’”
Walmart is considering store layouts. “We’re going to have to give the customers more space back,” he said. “We’re going to have to make shopping in the food hall easier to do.” The retailer might add more shelf space for high-volume products so customers don’t have to cross paths to pick up that merchandise. “I don’t want to have four people going for the same head of lettuce at the same time,” he said. That might mean reducing the SKUs in the store so customers have only two choices of Ranch dressing instead of six, for example.
The retailer also is considering adding zones of high-volume products reserved for associates who are putting together online orders, he said. Automation also is an option. The company is testing an automated picking system at a store in the Northeast. In Chicago, it is setting aside a dark store for pickers as a test.
Store parking lots will have to accommodate more curbside-pickup shoppers, he added. That might involve new entrances. “We may have to punch through some walls to be able to access remote parking or pickup zones.”
The full ICSC Connect Virtual Series episode is available here.
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By Brannon Boswell
Executive Editor, Commerce + Communities Today