Walmart adds Subway delivery to Express in 30 minutes

Walmart delivers – Starting this month, customers in select markets can add a freshly made Subway sandwich to Walmart’s Express Delivery order and receive it in as little as 30 minutes. Walmart will expand the rollout to roughly 1,400 locations by the end of the summer, charging

For many shoppers, the promise of speed has always been Walmart’s superpower. Now the retailer is turning that same urgency toward lunch.

Starting this month. customers in select markets can add a freshly made Subway sandwich to their Walmart delivery order through the Walmart app or Walmart.com. The sandwich can arrive in as little as 30 minutes. either on its own or alongside the groceries. prescriptions. and household staples already available through Walmart’s Express Delivery service.

Walmart is rolling this out as its first restaurant integration inside Express Delivery. If it works, it could extend beyond Subway and include food from other restaurant chains.

The rollout is live in select stores across Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Walmart says it will expand to roughly 1,400 locations by the end of the summer. Express Delivery comes with a flat fee: $10 for Walmart+ members and roughly $20 for nonmembers. Subway’s prices match its in-restaurant menus.

Walmart estimates the average shopper makes around 21 meal decisions a week. “Sometimes they want more convenient options than are available even within our stores today, especially for delivery,” said Tracy Poulliot, EVP of eCommerce and Marketing for Walmart U.S.

Subway is the first partner because it already operates inside Walmart stores at scale. Subway is Walmart’s largest in-store restaurant tenant. with a relationship dating back to 2004 and more than 1. 400 counters operating inside Walmart stores. “It was just a natural partnership and starting point for us on this journey,” Poulliot said. “Together we serve millions of customers across the U.S.”.

Orders are made fresh at those in-store Subway locations, then picked up and dispatched with the rest of the customer’s Walmart run—so the sandwich that’s assembled for delivery is the same one customers would see while walking past the restaurant counters.

Walmart says delivering a hot sandwich fast is the hard part—and it’s been building the system to meet that challenge. A sandwich assembled too early can go soggy. and a delivery driver who arrives before the food is ready can waste time that customers don’t want to give up. Walmart is confident it can keep the timing right because it has spent years building out its delivery operations. and it says its driver network and last-mile capabilities are scaled nationally.

“Our driver network and our last-mile delivery capabilities are scaled nationally, and we’ve been doing this for long enough that we’ve been able to refine the experience,” Poulliot said.

The company is now using artificial intelligence to fine-tune the operation even further. For restaurant orders. Walmart says it uses AI-powered technology to “coordinate prep times for the restaurants. how long those orders will take to pick up. [and] how long the delivery will take to bring to the consumer. ” according to Poulliot. The goal is straightforward: make, bag, and dispatch each order at the right moment.

Walmart also frames the approach as a combination of data ecosystems—its delivery expertise and Subway’s food-freshness know-how. “When we combine those two ecosystems of data together, we’re able to make really informed decisions,” Poulliot said. Walmart also says it moved from concept to launch in about nine months.

The move lands in a delivery market dominated by DoorDash and Uber Eats, and it adds pressure to Walmart’s broader competitive stance against Amazon, which offers a free Grubhub+ membership as a perk for Prime subscribers.

But Walmart is approaching the category in a different way. Rather than building a restaurant marketplace. it is adding prepared food onto its existing app. which already delivers a wide variety of products. Walmart’s $10 minimum delivery fee means most people will likely use the Subway meal option alongside other orders they’re placing.

Within the app experience, Poulliot says customers who shop via the app will see Subway surface on the homepage or as a “contextual nudge” mid-order. In pilots, she said, early demand has been strong.

If the experiment works, Walmart may consider partnering with additional restaurants. Poulliot declined to name specific partners, but said Walmart is prepared to expand beyond its own store footprint. “We have additional tenant locations that we plan to expand to over time,” she said. “What we do [with] locations outside our stores is really going to be driven by how our customers respond.”.

The bet underneath the rollout is that hot food can move through Walmart’s network with the same reliability it brings to everyday items. If Walmart can do that. it won’t just be competing with delivery companies—it will have effectively turned its 4. 600 stores into a delivery network that is hard for any company. including Amazon. to match.

Walmart Subway Express Delivery Walmart+ eCommerce last-mile delivery artificial intelligence meal delivery DoorDash Uber Eats Amazon Grubhub+