This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment explores Walmart's growing delivery network, expanding drone operations, and rapid rise in store-fulfilled orders.

Chris Walton and Shelley Huff discuss why speed is becoming one of retail's strongest competitive advantages, how Walmart is increasing customer loyalty through convenience, and why repeat usage may be the most important metric to watch.

The conversation also examines how Walmart's delivery infrastructure could help it compete with convenience stores as well as Amazon.

⏩ Tune in for the full episode here: https://youtu.be/3lV5GVTa-TQ

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CFO John David Rady said faster delivery speeds are directly fueling customer engagement and that Walmart can now reach approximately 60% of the U.S. population with store fulfilled delivery.

Chris, this is also the A and M Consumer Retail Group put you on the spot.

Question of the week.

Here it is.

There were a lot of record high numbers for Walmart in its earnings call related to store fulfilled delivery, total sales, customer reach, time to deliver, customer satisfaction, even drone deliveries.

For this to really matter over time, which number are you keeping your eye on?

The closest?

Oh geez, that's a really tough question.

I can't wait to get your take on this too.

As a former CEO, CEO, I think I, I'm probably going to take a lot of flack for this, but I think you have to watch transactions first and foremost because that signals to me customer love.

And then as the next layer, I don't think you can just watch one either.

I think as the next layer you have to watch repeat usage and customer satisfaction around those types of deliveries.

If all three of those metrics are going well, then you have an absolute home run.

Because I agree with the CFO that getting customers to transact with you with this type of delivery speed, execution, that drives loyalty.

And it goes back even to what we talked about in the first headline.

You know, like how are people going to, you know, think about all that's coming when loyalty is a factor and confidence in delivery is a factor because speed is a universal truth.

Amazon banks on it.

Walmart's banking on it now because all things being equal, people want things faster.

But with that said, Shelley, I'm also really anxious to watch the continued drone expansion.

400,000 Drone deliveries in like three months of the first three months of the fiscal year.

That's, that's insane.

And they said the fastest deliveries in four minutes.

You put that in perspective.

This is crazy, Shelly.

It means we, we could have ordered something at the start of this headline and before we are finished with it, most likely because the clock is ticking.

We could have, we could have had it delivered before we're even done Debating it, that's just absolutely phenomenal and crazy to me.

It's absolutely nuts.

But I don't know, what do you think?

I think this is incredibly powerful.

I think this is Walmart putting the entire force of its scale to work.

And I think there's two ways for Walmart to grow.

Increase share of wallet or get more wallets.

And when you talk about the Amazon vs Walmart, Amazon known for consistent delivery times, Walmart, that's probably the biggest competitive point.

This is Walmart really making a big play here and a lot of investment in converting customers into the Walmart ecosystem.

So I agree with you on transactions, but I lean more toward this behavior repetition because that's gonna be the biggest signal of stickiness.

So, so, and that's I think the biggest differentiator of Walmart actually taking a ton of share from Amazon.

So in converting those Amazon loyalists.

But yeah, I'm excited to see Walmart really harness its power here and really make a big play that's significant to consumers.

And I can't tell you how many times I'm out running errands or having lunch with a friend or dinner and I said, oh, I need to pick up these few things later.

Wouldn't it be great if the drone actually showed up and dropped those things off and saved me a trip?

So, so I think this is exciting to see and I love when Walmart does things like this that are big because no one else in the world can do it as well as they can.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

When I need a quick delivery, I'm actually going to Walmart before Amazon.

That's just what I'm doing now because they've just done such a good job, at least for the circles that you and I travel in, of making this known that they have this option.

But I think if we step back too and we take a 30,000 foot view of this, possibly even from a drone.

Shelly is like, you look at what we've talked about like Walmart growth from Marketplace, right, The first headline we did, and then also just tangentially, growth from, you know, upper income shoppers getting into targets territory.

The other part about drones that I think is really interesting, I love your take on this too, is you're not just competing with Amazon and Target and other grocers here, you're also setting up the infrastructure to compete with every convenience store out there as well, which is a massive, massive market that oftentimes gets overlooked.

That's right.

And I think that that is also one of the biggest indicators that they can steal share.

I mean, you know, and not only that, they went on price and against these small convenience stores every day, but they're not the closest corner store.

And so this makes Walmart incredibly accessible to anyone, anywhere.

And I think that makes a big difference.

Yeah, in four minutes, I'm getting my Gatorade and my Doritos from Walmart.

I'm not driving to the local speedway.

Are you kidding me?

No way.

No, no way.