Walmart expands its test on automated grocery kiosks in its Sherman, Texas location. These kiosks serve as vending machines for online grocery orders.
Business Insider reported that the kiosks allow customers to pick up online orders within seconds without having to interact with employees. Employees will pick and pack online orders and store them in bins in a 11-foot-by-127-foot kiosk attached to the store.
The kiosk have refrigerators and freezers to keep the groceries fresh. When customers pick up the orders they will scan the barcode located on the “order ready” email from Walmart. The groceries will appear bagged.
Walmart first tested kiosks in Oklahoma last year. The current version promises to be larger and can serve five customers simultaneously, according to Business Insider. The first version was only able to serve two.
A Walmart spokesperson told Business Insider, “Not only do customers not have to wait for an associate to bring them their order, but they also never need to set foot insider the store.” “The whole process can take less than a minute and we’ll be adding more pickup times soon to allow customers to pickup their orders anytime…day or night.”
Earlier this year, Walmart expanded its pickup program for non-grocery items by adding 500 more pickup towers to stores across the country. Nearly 200 of its stores already had towers. More than half of a million orders have been retrieved through these towers when the program was first introduced.