Bentonville, Arkansas - Walmart has added meals from Subway to the roster of items available through its 30-minute express delivery service, making the sandwich chain's offerings accessible to customers via the retailer's mobile app.
The retailer said the Subway integration is already live in several states and that it intends to broaden the fast-delivery option for the restaurant chain to roughly 1,400 Walmart locations by late summer. Subway is Walmart's largest in-store restaurant tenant.
Program scope and company remarks
Walmart described Subway as a starting point for an initiative that could extend to other in-tenant food operators. "Subway is a great starting point ... but naturally for us, we want to make sure that any in-tenant location for our customers has the ability to have delivery via express," said Tracy Poulliot, Walmart's executive vice president of U.S. e-commerce and marketing, speaking on the sidelines of the retailer's annual Associates Week event.
The company characterized the Subway rollout as the opening phase of a broader effort to enable fast delivery from restaurant locations situated inside Walmart stores.
Competitive and technological context
The expansion comes as Walmart presses to strengthen its e-commerce and delivery capabilities amid fierce competition with Amazon for delivery dominance. Walmart is experimenting with drone delivery and deploying AI-driven technology upgrades to manage inventory, according to the company.
Walmart operates a large store network it leverages for online fulfillment. The retailer uses more than 4,600 stores to satisfy online orders and earlier this year extended its 30-minute delivery option for groceries and other items to about 33 cities. Executives said in May that the 30-minute option was the company's fastest-growing delivery offering, and Walmart CFO John David Rainey told Wall Street analysts in May that sales using store-fulfilled delivery had more than doubled over the past two years.
Economic backdrop and in-store dining footprint
The announcement arrives against the backdrop of a U.S. economy described as increasingly bifurcated, as lower-income households - historically a core Walmart customer base - have tempered spending across categories. Subway has been present inside Walmart supercenters since 2004, making it a long-standing tenant.
Other national quick-service restaurant brands such as Taco Bell, McDonald's and Wendy's also maintain footprints inside Walmart locations, alongside regional operators including Auntie Anne's.
What the rollout means operationally
Walmart is positioning its dense store network and expanding express delivery capability as a differentiator in the race for faster customer fulfillment. By integrating in-store restaurant menus into its app-based ordering and express delivery pipeline, Walmart aims to deepen the range of items available for rapid delivery from store inventory and on-site tenants.
Details beyond the planned scale and the phased state-level availability of Subway's express delivery were not provided.