The news: Walmart now offers delivery in 30 minutes or less across 33 markets, intensifying its competition with Amazon while widening its lead over other retailers.

The details: Over 100,000 items are eligible for fast delivery, including fresh groceries, baby products, cold and flu medicine, pet food, and other household supplies and necessities.

• The service is live in Austin, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, and other markets.
• It costs $10 for Walmart+ members; the retailer did not say whether the feature is available for nonmembers.

Why it matters: The fast delivery race between Walmart and Amazon is not only making both retailers stickier with consumers; it’s also changing how people shop.

• Walmart noted that customer behavior is evolving in response to faster delivery speeds, with more shoppers using delivery in 30 minutes or less for immediate, everyday needs.
• Amazon has repeatedly pointed to faster delivery as a key lever for increasing shoppers’ willingness to make a purchase from the retailer, as well as order frequency and basket sizes.

With Amazon and Walmart setting the standard, retailers are racing to catch up. The average number of days from order to delivery has halved since 2018, according to FMI and Nielsen IQ. But with an average speed of 3.2 days, most companies are significantly lagging, giving the top two retailers more room to grab share.

Implications for retailers: Countering Walmart’s and Amazon’s faster delivery speeds is tough, but not impossible.

Retailers should use their stores as distribution centers to get orders to shoppers faster—although they must take care not to degrade the experience for in-store shoppers. This could spur companies to increase their store footprint, much like Best Buy is doing.

Companies should also look for partners that can deliver the desired speed. That could mean teaming up with third-party intermediaries like Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart, or turning to companies like Stord that can handle warehousing and inventory management.