Is Walmart Grocery Pickup any Good? Here’s My Review

I never really shopped for groceries at Walmart much unless I was visiting the U.S.  We always had one nearby so it was a familiar and convenient option.  Trips to Wally World at home in Canada were  normally reserved more for of the cheap department store items, but still pretty infrequent as I am just not a huge fan of the place in general.  So if I don’t even like going into Walmart, why would I start getting groceries there?

I’ve found that the inventory in some cases is fairly hit or miss at Walmart for groceries.  It’s understandable since a lot of Walmart locations aren’t what I would consider a “full” grocery store.  They have most of your regular grocery items, but seemed to have a bit less selection and variety overall.  But it’s understandable since it’s not a dedicated grocery store.  However, they seem to be going towards that business model or more like some of the larger U.S. style Walmart’s that have a much larger grocery section, like a store within a store.

Why did I try Walmart Grocery Pickup again?

The reason I decided to try Walmart for groceries again can basically be boiled down to COVID-19.  I’m still a little uneasy going into grocery stores.  Not to say that I’m scared or totally against it, I used to love doing a weekly shop just to get out of the house and have a break from work.  But now the stores just seem like a prime location for germs to spread, particularly at the busy times when I can get there.  With people touching everything on the shelves, shared carts, and just being in a closed building in close proximity to potentially many others, no thanks. So with that in mind, I figured why not just avoid going in altogether.    If there’s the option to sit in my car and accomplish the same task, I’ll take it.

We were getting a lot of our groceries from Superstore since PC Express is another great pickup option, and I’m still using it.  You can read my full PC Express Grocery Pickup Review here. But as people were staying home and buying more groceries, and more deciding to use pickup service, slots tended to fill up regularly and quickly.  There was one point where I couldn’t get a pickup slot for almost 2 weeks in advance!

There were also a couple times where we had picked out a ton of items and something went wrong with the cart, or we forgot to fully checkout.  Then we’d go back to find it wasn’t saved and another slot wasn’t available until 4 days after our original choice.  Not good.  The options have improved since then with more availability, the stores all seem to have added more slots and parking spaces to handle the increased order volumes.  But the difficulty getting slots is another one of the reasons that prompted me to try Walmart’s pickup service again, and I was pleasantly surprised.

How does Walmart Grocery Pick Up it work?

Walmart pickup functions essentially the same as Superstore does, although I’d say in some instances from my own experience, better.  For example, Walmart seemed to have a lot more availability in terms of pickup times.  At peak days and times like Saturday mornings it could be tricky to get the spot you wanted, but generally I found their schedule much more wide open.  I don’t know if that’s because they were offering more slots overall, or if the service was just less popular at Walmart?

Hard to Find?

It also didn’t seem as well advertised or apparent it was available, as in some locations the parking is near the cart collection area, in others it’s actually behind the store near the delivery and loading area (which I think makes a lot of sense).  At some stores it’s just plain hard to find.  The first time picking up I called the store from the main parking lot because I couldn’t locate the pickup area.  They were at least quick to answer the phone and directed me to the appropriate location – it should be more obvious though! Superstore has a more dedicated parking area in many cases right at the front across from the entrance.  I also noticed their employees seemed to make more of an effort to say hello and be personable.

Advantages of Walmart Pickup

Another advantage I noticed is that Walmart  offers free grocery pickup, whereas Superstore would charge a fee of $3-$5 unless you’re a PC Insider member.  Grocery pickup had been free during most of the pandemic, but it seems they are re-instating the charges now that things are opening up a bit more in “Stage 2”.  Walmart’s minimum order is slightly higher at $50 vs. the $30 at Superstore/PC locations – but I don’t think that price difference is a real deterrent, as it’s really not that hard to spend $50 bucks on groceries.  I can also understand they don’t want to be running out a loaf of bread and pack of eggs every two seconds.

Have last minute changes?

Another big Walmart advantage in my opinion is that while at Superstore you have to have your order submitted 2 days in advance  and can’t change it after that, Walmart seems to let me change or modify an order right up until around midnight the day before!  I couldn’t figure out the exact cutoff time, but if I had an 8 a.m. pickup, I could be updating my shopping cart at 11:45 p.m. the night before, which is awesome if you forget to add something.  It seems to make sense, as I doubt Superstore is picking orders two days in advance.

Don’t pay more for the same product

And finally, the biggest win for Walmart I would say is their ad-match offering, allowing you to price-match from other local stores.  More on that in a bit.  But the basics are you can price match virtually anything, assuming it is available from another grocery retailer in your general area.

Walmart Grocery Key Differences

So here’s a quick rundown on some differences from Loblaws / Real Canadian Superstore.

• More Pickup Slot Availability on short notice
• No Pickup Fee on Orders over $50 picked up at the store (they have 3rd party pickup locations that charge a small fee)
• You can change or update your order up until the night before
• Price Matching with other local flyers is offered

Walmart Offers Grocery Delivery too

Just to note as well, Walmart also offers delivery service if you can’t safely go into a store for medical reasons, or if you just don’t have the time!  Delivery can be had for a $9.97 fee, which isn’t really that bad at all for the convenience factor.

I can’t really comment on the speed or quality of the delivery service as I’ve never tried it.  I may test that out in the future for the purposes of adding to the review.   At this point I’ve been too cheap to bother, trying to save money during COVID. And I’d rather just go pick up the items myself – meaning have a Walmart employee deposit them in my trunk.  It’s nice to get out of the house even for a short drive, given the months of lock down measures we’ve all endured.

My First Online Shopping Experience

The first time I used Walmart online grocery service was probably around two years ago.  At the time it was being heavily promoted, likely trying to get a jump start on larger, established grocery competitors.  Walmart was giving a $50 credit for trying the service out on orders of $80+ if I remember correctly, so naturally being a money saver, I couldn’t resist fifty bucks in free groceries.

I found the process at the time to be really cumbersome, difficult to find items by searching and picking through a million pages.  Trying to fill your cart just by browsing the pages is a slow and painful method.  Even with a list, I find it much harder than just walking the aisle of an actual grocery store and glancing around  the shelves quickly for items.

The actual pickup process when I drove to the store was pretty slow too.  Likely because they weren’t doing many orders and only one or two employees were probably assigned to pickup orders given the low demand  I waited about 10 minutes after arriving and also received some substitutions, which weren’t really what I’d consider good equivalents.  There’s also the consideration of other people picking out your fresh products like produce or refrigerated and perishable goods with acceptable (to you) best before dates.

Improvements After Initial Ordering

Two years later and I’d have to say the experience has been much better.  So much so that I’ll likely continue using pickup service after all the coronavirus headache is (hopefully) behind us.  Maybe not exclusively, but it’s definitely a convenience.  The online process is pretty easy after using it a few times.  Once you’ve submitted a couple orders, you’ll start to develop a list of favourite items based on past purchases.

This makes adding your regular items extremely convenient and so much quicker to pick out your groceries.  It’s a painless process with the one-click add to cart functionality, cutting down on browsing and searching for repeat items. It’s so handy for things like milk / bread / eggs that you buy all the time.  All those products you’ve ordered in the past are right there and one click and one screen from being added to your cart.   It’s potentially a great option for things like “repeat orders” too if you simply want a quick way to reload your household mainstays each week and then shop for fresh items elsewhere.  Another huge plus is you can shop when the store is closed!

Flyer Items & Browsing the Grocery Aisles

The main shopping page sorts things by “grocery aisles” along with some other groupings like Flyer products and Rollback (Sale) items.  You can shop aisles including Produce, Dairy, Meat , Pantry, Frozen… etc.  “Weekly Flyer” is a great feature since you can see all the flyer items on a sorted shopping page.  It’s nice to have if you don’t like flipping through those digital versions of the actual flyer.   The Rollback section is also great to just check out what is for sale that week but might not be in the flyer.   I’m sure everyone shops a little differently, but I tend to check out the flyer or sale items first to see what deals are on each week.

I actually like the sale page method better than the digital version of the paper flyer for adding items tot he cart.  It seems a bit easier from a user experience perspective, although I find the digital “paper” versions offered are a little quicker if you just want to skim all the deals that week.  A faster way to scan the entire  entire contents of the weekly flyer.

So, speaking of flyers and sale items, I’m going to let you in on a little secret that makes Walmart one of my favourite places to get grocery items now.  In particular, staples and popular brand name items you can get at almost all grocery stores.

AD MATCH

Yes, this is a game changer – online price matching.  For those who have the patience and the time, this can save you a TON of money each month and lets you get THE BEST sales on a lot of items.

Now to do this effectively you need to setup a bit of a system. The Flipp app or website can help quite a bit in speeding up the process of finding the best deals.  If you’ve never used it before, it basically aggregates all your local grocery flyers and finds the best prices for you on all identical or similar items. If you haven’t used Flipp before, I’d definitely check it out.

My current method is to get all my favourite discount flyers open in a browser (or Flipp) and browse the flyers for great deals on staples, freezer item or other things I need.  Anything that stands out. Ill see if I can find the equivalent at WalMart and add it to my cart.  Then I record the best price and the URL of the flyer I found it cheapest in.  Simple.

This allows you to  price match at your leisure and find all the best deals, without having to annoy the cashier or the 10 people in line behind you at the store.  Win win, right?   One thing to note is that there is a limit of 10 items you are allowed to price match, which seems fair as I’m sure they don’t want to sit there price matching 50 items for every order or items that are 5 cents cheaper.

Now it can be tedious, so I find that’s where it helps to incorporate it into your flyer browsing.  I like to keep an instance of “notepad” open to copy & paste my items and the prices in.  Then when it comes time to price match with the Walmart online, it’s simply a copy and paste job.  It helps to use a basic system.

The speed at which Walmart seems to process these ad match requests is impressive.  The majority of the time they are done next day.  I’ve found that on average I’m saving about $15-$20 on an $80-$100 order.  That is a ton of savings over the course of a year, I’m estimating something like $1,000 just from price matching.

This will of course depend on your personal shopping habits and family size, but generally you’ll save a decent amount and those days of making trips to multiple grocery stores are over!

Below is an actual price match form I’ve filled out from a recent order to demonstrate the savings.  You can find the form at the bottom of their website in the grocery section under “Ad Match”. Above right is my quick copy/paste method to make populating the form easier.   You might ask, why bother and why not just use the form directly?  It’s so I don’t lose the data if the form decides not to submit properly.  There’s nothing worse than filling out a huge form and getting an error on submission only to lose your data and have to fill it all out again or just give up!

Total savings on this order was $26.08 on a bill of $108.02.   A refund of about 24% + my credit card cashback & points.  Not bad at all.

Time Slots / Substitutions / Checkout

As I mentioned earlier, there seemed to be a lot more available time slots open with Walmart when comparing the calendar to Real Canadian Superstore.  I don’t know if that’s just due to the fact that less people buy groceries at Walmart, or if they have more staff working the grocery pickup area.  Whenever I have gone to either grocery pickup, it seemed to be quicker on average at Walmart, even when the pick up parking area was full.

From what I’ve seen the time of day you choose will also impact wait times.  Morning pickups are much busier, and obviously weekends are worse than weekdays.  Speaking to employees at both stores, they recommended evenings for the fastest service and said it’s generally not very busy for grocery pickup starting in the late afternoon.

Overall, the whole Walmart checkout process is pretty standard and very easy to use.  You must have $50 worth of groceries in your cart to book a pickup slot.  Once you’ve met the threshold,  you select the location you’ll be picking up from and a date and time.  From there you continue to the payment page and you’re done.

Another thing I like is the fact that Walmart has more payment options for those who enjoy collecting credit card points.  You can pay with all major credit cards including American Express and also PayPal.   I appreciate the fact that i can get groceries and load up on Amex points!

The actual pickup process is very easy and convenient.  You just pull into your pickup spot at the appropriate time, phone the number on the sign and someone is usually out within a couple minutes.

I’ve found that substitutions for items not available has generally been good, and you can refuse them if you don’t want them.  An email arrives in your inbox usually a couple hours before your scheduled pickup time, notifying you that your order is ready and which  substitutions have been made if any.

Even if I’ve forgotten to check my email, the person on the phone or bringing the order out will almost always ask if you are aware and okay with the substitutions on your order.

Another recent feature is that you can use the Walmart app to check in when you’ve made a grocery order.  They seem to be trying to streamline everything as much as possible to reduce time the staff has to deal with phone calls and relaying information to each other.  Makes perfect sense and will hopefully make for an even smoother and faster grocery pick up experience.

Final Thoughts

Walmart grocery pickup has become much easier to use and more widely available.  They had a fairly good system setup before COVID-19 happened, so it was likely a smooth transition to adapt to the larger volume of grocery pick up orders.

Ease of use with the website is great when purchasing online and a major time saver.  Particularly once you’ve ordered a couple times and your favourite items are available in an easy to add format.

Lots of Payment Options

Walmart offers lots of payment options and pick up times.  New customers will also enjoy $10 off their first order as a bonus (use coupon code WALMART10).  Delivery is available as well at certain locations, for a nominal fee of just under $10.  Pickup is free although orders must be $50 or more to qualify.

Ad Matching

Online Ad Match is a game changer.  I never bothered price-matching in stores because I felt like it was kind of a lame move holding up an entire line to save a dollar or two.  It’s especially annoying I’m sure when they have to call another cashier or supervisor over to verify something.  Nothing like a line of people burning a hole in the back of your head so you can save a dollar on bagels.

In the past I’d resort to having two lists and grabbing the sale items at a couple different stores.  Why bother with that when you can do it all online at your own leisure without annoying the cashiers or other customers.

Fresh Food

One negative with Walmart pickup I would say is that produce has not always been the greatest quality in my experience.  I’m an advocate for getting good quality fresh items even if they cost more, as they will be better overall and usually last longer – saving money in the long run.  You also can’t control who’s picking your fruits and vegetables and how good of a  job they’ll do.  For pantry items and frozen food, Walmart is awesome when it comes to prices.

Conclusion

For now, I think I’ll continue using Walmart pick up service with their price matching feature for staples and stick to the Superstores, Longos and Sobeys of the world for my fresh meats and produce, just based on the quality.  Not to say Walmart’s stuff is bad, but just a personal preference and I think other stores have fresher items that are re-stocked more frequency.

Overall it’s been a great experience and a great way to save money, especially at a time when many can use some extra cash in their pockets. Hopefully this review has been helpful and will assist you in saving a few dollars on your groceries too.

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