Walmart Grocery vs. Amazon Fresh
For the past month or so, I’ve been testing out Amazon Fresh, Amazon’s grocery delivery service. And while there’s been some great benefits to having it, there’s also been a few misses. Earlier this week, I found out that Walmart had expanded their own grocery delivery service to my area, so I thought I’d take it for a spin and compare.
Selection
While there are literally millions of items available from Amazon, I sometimes feel their biggest benefit is also their biggest curse. If I search for Gilette Mach 3 razors, I will find tons of different options — some with different quantities, some with different packaging, and sometimes, the same item, just with a different price. It’s confusing, and always leaves me wondering if I’m actually getting the best deal or not. Further, other pieces of Amazon’s ecosystem, like their Dash buttons, strive to make things simpler for customers, but with those, I often find that I can only pick a small subset of Amazon’s selection, and often at higher prices too.
On the flip side, with Walmart, I can easily browse through their products, and find the specific brands that I buy in their store. (Amazon has specific brands too, but as a person who will sometimes choose the store brand versus a name brand, it’s more comforting to have a selection of names that sound familiar to me.)
Overall, I’m sure that Amazon actually has a greater selection of items, but with Walmart’s website, it’s actually easier for me to find specifically the item I’m looking for.
Amazon does have a few tricks up their sleeve to mitigate this though. As a user of their Amazon Dash device, I can easily scan a barcode in my kitchen and that item is automagically looked up and added to my cart on Amazon — provided they have the item. (This won’t work, of course, for store label items, like Market Pantry or Great Value.)
Winner: Amazon for variety, but Walmart for having specifically what I need
Price
There are some hidden experiences to Amazon’s pricing structure. First, you pay $14.99 a month to use the service. Walmart does not charge a fee. Amazon also requires a $50 minimum for free delivery, and Walmart requires a minimum $30 purchase.
Using the two orders I bought from Amazon Fresh over this past month, I went to Walmart’s website and price compared each item. Without a doubt, each item was cheaper through Walmart’s website. Sometimes only by a few cents, but in some cases, by $1-$2. My first Amazon Fresh order was $90 but had I purchased that through Walmart, it would have been $60. (And the $90 doesn’t include the $14.99 monthly membership fee.)
Also, if there’s a price drop on Amazon, you pretty much won’t even notice. The price you paid when you got your order was the price you paid. With Walmart, if the price drops between your order and delivery time, you’ll get the cheaper price.
You do pay a bit more for the convenience of having the food delivered to your doorstep with Amazon Fresh, but hands down, Walmart is cheaper. And their pricing is guaranteed to be the same price as if you went into the store and bought it yourself. So really, what do you have to lose?
Winner: Walmart
Exceptions
With Amazon Fresh, if you want an item and they’re out of stock, then you’re out of luck. With Walmart, they’ll substitute if they can (you can give permission for substitutions, or just not be charged if they run out of an item). If Walmart has to substitute an item, they’ll make it worth your while. For instance, I ordered 1lb of strawberries and they were out. They tried to get as close as they could, which was a container of 2lbs of strawberries. Cost different to me? None. Way to go, Walmart.
Winner: Walmart
Delivery/Pickup Experience
With Amazon Fresh, your food is delivered straight to your door. You pick out a convenient time for you online, and you can either have an attended or unattended delivery. When I was testing it, I opted for unattended delivery. When my delivery time arrived, an Amazon Fresh associate would drop off the food at my door, packaged securely in reusable containers. And there was a TON of packaging. My first order turned out to be 8–9 of these large, green Amazon totes. Inside were thermal-like insulating blankets, dry ice and ice packs. While Amazon would pick up this packaging and reuse it for future deliveries, it still felt like a lot of eco-waste. The result? My food was kept fresh and chilled until I could bring it in and put it away.
Walmart is still testing delivery in certain markets; unfortunately mine isn’t one of them, so I had to go to the store to pick mine up. But the experience was pretty painless. When you arrive at Walmart, you go to a designated parking spot. You simply call a number and a few minutes later, they bring your order out to you. Every item is carefully packaged, and delicate items, like your bread and eggs, are handed directly to you. The rest? They’ll put it in your trunk and you don’t even have to get out of the car. Oh, and since this was my first time, they even gave me a little welcome gift of some snacks, bottle water and product samples.
Overall, with Amazon Fresh, it’s pretty convenient to have food delivered straight to your doorstep, but you still have to expend a lot of effort to bringing it in the house and putting it away. So it’s not like it’s saving you that much time for the extra fee you pay. With Walmart’s approach, you just show up, get everything loaded into your car, and you’re off. Same amount of effort to unload and put the food away, but it’s much cheaper and since I didn’t really have to wait at the store, I saved a lot of time. Plus, the only packaging I had to recycle were the standard plastic bags that I usually get anyways.
Winner: Walmart, if you’re cool with driving to pick it up
Final Thoughts
Having tried both services now, I’m definitely more a fan of Walmart’s. They have surprisingly great customer service, and the whole ability to just drive up to the store and have your order brought to your car without you even needing to turn off the engine totally makes Walmart an actual desirable shopping experience.
What would make the Amazon experience better in my opinion? Compete 1:1 with Walmart on price.
If you want to try Walmart Grocery, here’s a promo link you can use to save $10 off your first order ($50 minimum).
