Big-box retailer Target just announced the expansion of its Shipt and Drive Up programs into the Midwest and Southeast, as well as new markets for its city-focused Target Restock service.
Shipt, which Target acquired for $550 million in late 2017, competes with Instacart in the grocery delivery realm and enables Target customers to place a grocery order online and have it delivered on the same day. A Shipt membership is $99 per year.
This latest expansion will put the program in over 135 markets by the end of June, according to a press statement. The service goes live today in Chicago, and is also planned for Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and other parts of Illinois.
Drive Up, meanwhile, is in over 600 stores across 20 states as of this week. The service lets those who order via the Target app pick their goods up curbside on the same day. Orders are supposed to arrive within two minutes of the customer arriving in the store parking lot. Markets this service expanded to this week include Kansas City, Missouri, Omaha, Nebraska, Nashville, Tennessee, and Raleigh, North Carolina. Further expansion is planned for July, including the Chicago area.
Both moves are part of Target’s larger plan of making these services available “coast to coast” in time for the Holiday 2018 season.
Target also mentioned the expansion of its Target Restock service, which offers same-day and next-day delivery on household goods, to metro areas outside NYC—Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. The service is focused on urban areas where something like Drive Up makes no sense because there’s nowhere to actually drive up to. Anyone who’s ever tried to haul a load of household cleaning supplies or a piece of furniture home on the subway understands the value of this service. It’s competitively cheap, too: A Target Restock box is free for Target REDcard purchases and $2.99 otherwise.
Online grocery is a booming business these days, with expectations for sales to hit $100 billion by 2025. This latest expansion from Target is a move to, uh, target areas of the country where the retailer can compete with the likes of Albertsons, Kroger, Walmart, and, of course, the Amazon-Whole Foods behemoth.
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