Walmart will widen grocery delivery areas

Walmart plans to expand its grocery home-delivery service to more than 100 metro areas this year, a sign its food fight with Amazon. com is heating up.

The service, now in six cities, will roll out to more than 40 percent of U.S. households by year’s end, the company said Wednesday. Deliveries will be handled by Uber Technologies and other providers and will carry a $9.95 service fee — with a $30 minimum purchase.

“We’re moving fast,” Tom Ward, Walmart’s vice president of digital operations, said in an interview.

The move into home delivery is part of Walmart’s broader push to get more of its in-store shoppers to start buying online as well, where they typically spend twice as much. It also complements Walmart’s rollout of curbside grocery pickup, now available in 1,200 stores and coming to an additional 1,000 this year.

Walmart’s online business had been a bright spot for the chain, but it stumbled during the holiday season. Inventory snafus hurt sales, and investors have fretted over the impact that its e-commerce initiatives will have on profitability.

Walmart will compete against Amazon’s Prime Now service, which offers free two-hour delivery to members of its loyalty program. That service has supplanted its Amazon Fresh program, which launched a decade ago but has been scaled back. Both companies have also introduced services that allow delivery people to enter homes and leave packages inside.

Other big grocers, such as Kroger and Costco Wholesale, use Instacart’s personal shoppers to handle deliveries. Target agreed to acquire delivery startup Shipt last year to expand its capabilities.