Two area Walmarts add quick online grocery, store pickup

The Lebanon Walmart is the newest in a string of stores to take on faster pickup methods for customers.

Starting today, customers of the supercenter at 1530 Walmart Drive now have two pickup options after ordering groceries and other items online.

Without leaving their cars, shoppers will be able to choose from 40,000 online grocery items and choose the best time to pick them up. When the customers arrive, a Walmart personal shopper loads the groceries into their cars at no additional cost. Same-day pickup is available if placed by 10 a.m.

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This is the first location in Warren County to offer the Online Grocery Pickup service. Franklin Walmart will also debut the service this week, according to a release.

The Lebanon Walmart is the ninth Ohio store to debut the Walmart’s Pickup Tower, a 16-foot tall vending machine that can fulfill online orders in less than a minute. Lebanon customers can order from the millions of items online and select the pickup option.

When the items arrive at the store, Walmart employees load vending machine with the order, which customers can retrieve by scanning a bar code sent to their smart phones.

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Middletown was the first Ohio city to take on a tower in September. Since then, Walmart stores in Fairfield Twp., Holland, Steubenville, Bryan, Athens, Zanesville, Franklin and Lebanon have debuted the towers.

“Like never before technology is enabling customers to order anything they want, no matter where they are and to get it whenever they want it,” said Walmart online grocery pickup manager Adam Duncan. “Walmart recognizes how important time and value are to our customers and we are proud to offer innovations like Online Grocery Pickup and the Pickup Tower to meet their needs whether they are shopping in person or ordering through the Walmart app.”

In April, Walmart announced it expects to spend an estimated $94 million in the remodels of 27 Ohio stores and innovations over the next year.

In recent months, Walmart has announced a number of new initiatives to attract and keep shoppers. It’s new personal shopping service called JetBlack allows customers to order products via text message for $50 a month.

Just last month, Walmart also announced it was buying a controlling stake in India’s largest retailer. Walmart purchased a 77 percent stake in India’s Flipkart for $16 billion, making it the discount chain’s largest acquisition to date.

Walmart has 38 stores located in the greater Dayton area, according to the company’s store locator.

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