Walmart, DoorDash partnership coming to close

After four years of delivering groceries to Walmart’s customers, DoorDash and the supermarket giant have officially parted ways, according to a source close to the matter. 

The San Francisco-based delivery service reportedly gave Walmart a 30-day notice, meaning the partnership will formally end in September. The two companies first partnered on grocery delivery in 2018.

“We’d like to thank Walmart for their partnership and are looking forward to continuing to build and provide support for merchants in the years ahead,” said a DoorDash spokesperson in a statement. 

DoorDash has a 94% cross-country U.S. household reach, according to its site. In a recent SEC filing, the company said its monthly active users ordering from a non-restaurant merchant (including grocery and convenience) had grown to 14% in December of last year.

The move isn’t a first for Walmart, which also parted ways with both its Uber and Lyft grocery delivery deals in 2018. Walmart has also been actively building up its own delivery service platform, Spark, available in more than 600 cities. 

Last summer, Walmart also launched Walmart GoLocal, its own white-label “delivery as a service” that offers its e-commerce and logistics capabilities to other businesses, including small to large retailers. GoLocal then distributes orders to third-party service providers via Spark.

Parting ways with Walmart certainly doesn’t mean DoorDash is out of the grocery game. The company’s active grocery partners include Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons companies (including Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco) — a partnership which began in June 2021 — as well as Meijer and Hy-Vee, which both started offering alcohol delivery via the delivery service in December 2021

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