Walmart plans $28M in Md. store upgrades

Walmart plans to spend $28 million to upgrade eight Maryland stores and expand its online grocery pickup service in the state, the retailer said Wednesday.

The mass merchant will remodel Baltimore-area stores in Abingdon, Catonsville, Hanover, Randallstown and Severn, as well as stores in Frederick, Landover Hills and Waldorf, over the next year.

Walmart plans to roll out its curbside grocery pickup for online orders to another10 stores in the state. It now offers the service at 11 Maryland locations.

The Maryland investment is part of the chain’s $11 billion capital budget for fiscal year 2019.

The retailer also said it will expand its Mobile Express Scan & Go service, but did not announce specific locations. The app allows shoppers to scan items with mobile devices while in stores, pay through the app and avoid checkout lines.

Walmart also announced plans to evaluate additional locations for its in-store Pickup Towers, self-service kiosks where customers can scan bar codes sent to their smartphones and pick up merchandise ordered online. Walmart installed a tower in its Arbutus store last summer.

Like many retailers, Walmart is rolling out self-checkout options and adding automation in stores. Sometimes those changes result in job losses — self-checkout for customers means retailers need fewer cashiers.

For example, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer cut 7,000 back-of-store jobs in accounting with automation in 2016. According to a December report by the technology news site Recode, Walmart is experimenting with technologies to enable it to need fewer cashiers or even none in stores and possibly do away with checkout lanes.

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment about how the changes in Maryland might affect jobs in the stores.