A Walmart employee handles duties in the backroom of a store. Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) says it expects to spend an estimated $64 million this year in New York through the remodeling of 13 stores. The effort will also include the expansion of “customer-focused” services. (Photo credit: Walmart website)
Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) expects to spend an estimated $64 million this year in New York through the remodeling of 13 stores.
Of those stores, 10 are located in Central and upstate New York, and three are on Long Island.
The effort will also include the launch and “continued expansion of several customer-focused” services, Walmart said in a news release.
The Central and upstate New York locations that Walmart plans to remodel in 2019 include:
“We continue investing in our stores and in our people,” Keith Wyche, Walmart’s regional general manager for New York, said in the release. “Our multi-million dollar investment in New York is part of our overall mission to improve the customer experience, making shopping faster and more convenient, both in-store and online.”
The company said it has more than 36,000 employees in New York.
Walmart’s estimated expenditure in New York this fiscal year (Feb. 1, 2019 to Jan. 31, 2020) is a portion of the company’s total capital-expenditure guidance of about $11 billion for fiscal year 2020. Walmart outlined it last October at the company’s annual meeting for the investment community and reiterated it in February.
Grocery pickup, delivery
Walmart also plans to expand some of its “customer-focused” services, or what it calls, “innovations.”
It plans to expand its grocery-pickup service to 25 more stores statewide by the end of the year, a service that Walmart offers “at no additional cost.”
The company also recently introduced Walmart Voice Order, which allows customers to simply say “Hey Google, talk to Walmart” and the Google assistant will add items directly to their Walmart grocery cart.
Besides the pickup service, Walmart also plans to add its delivery service to 12 stores, increasing its coverage area in the state. The news release didn’t name the dozen stores where the company will add the service.
Walmart pickup towers
Walmart Pickup Towers are 16-feet tall, high-tech vending machines capable of fulfilling a customers’ online order “in less than a minute” once they arrive at the store. Once the order is ready, customers scan the barcode sent to their smartphone at the pickup tower to get their item. Walmart plans to add 16 pickup towers to stores across the state.
FAST unloader
Walmart is using a new system in its backrooms — which it calls FAST — to automatically scan and sort items that come off trucks based on priority and department. Walmart this year plans to expand the technology to 33 stores across the state.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
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