Walmart remodeling local stores, adding services
EAST GREENBUSH, N.Y. » Two local Walmart locations are part of the company’s $52 million investment in stores across the state.
Walmart recently announced it expects to spend an estimated $52 million in New York during the next year through the remodeling of 15 stores as well as the rollout of several in-store and online innovations, a news release said.
On the list of more than a dozen Walmarts around the state receiving remodels this year are the Halfmoon store on Route 9 in Saratoga County and the 279 Troy Rd. store in East Greenbush, Rensselaer County.
The spend is part of Walmart’s total capital expenditures guidance of approximately $11 billion for Fiscal Year 2019, which was outlined last October at the company’s annual meeting for the investment community and reiterated in February 2018.
Walmart recently reported strong comp sales growth of 2.1 percent for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2018, indicating customers are responding well to the company’s business strategy. The plan is to continue improving stores and accelerating innovation during the coming year, with a goal to make shopping faster and easier for customers in New York.
“We’ll continue improving our store experience in New York while offering our customers new technology and innovations that makes shopping faster and more convenient,” said Keith Wyche, a Walmart regional general manager in New York, in a press release. “We look forward to expanding these convenient services in other communities throughout the state, while continuing to provide the convenient onestop shopping experience our customers know and love.”
As Walmart continues to innovate how it serves customers, the idea is to help shoppers save time and money by creating a seamless experience that empowers customers to shop when, where and how they want.
In addition to continuing to test new technologies that transform how customers shop, Walmart plans to expand several innovative services that deliver greater convenience and faster services.
Expanded shopping options include online grocery pickup, a program through which customers can order Walmart groceries online and pick them up without ever having to unbuckle their seatbelts. The service is free and prices through Walmart Online Grocery are the same as in the store.
Walmart currently offers grocery pickup at 19 New York locations - including Wilton, Halfmoon and East Greenbush - and plans to roll out 18 new grocery pickup locations at stores in 2018 and 2019.
Another new debut is the Walmart Pickup Tower, a hightech vending machine that allows customers to pick up their online orders in less than a minute by scanning a bar code sent to their smartphone. To use the tower, customers simply choose from millions of items available on Walmart.com and select the pickup option at checkout.
The Pickup Tower service is currently only available at the Monroe Walmart store, but Walmart plans to continue evaluating opportunities expand this service to New York customers in the coming year.