Because industrial-sized ketchup won’t deliver itself -- and Amazon keeps proving people would rather buy things online than venture into stores -- the wholesale warehouse store Costco announced it will begin its own delivery services.
The company will offer same-day grocery delivery at 376 of Costco’s 514 US locations, according to Business Insider. The groceries will be delivered in as little as an hour through its partnership with Instacart. Two-day delivery will be offered on nonperishable items -- the giant boxes of cookies and cereal and the like -- for free, on orders over $75.
"We feel good that we've got a few delivery options for our members that frankly are better than the ones they were doing the day before with us, or with Instacart, or with anybody else," Costco CFO Richard Galanti said in a call announcing the company’s fourth-quarter earnings.
The changes come as Costco continues to field questions about possible declines in new membership and how it plans to deal with households that have both a Costco membership and an Amazon Prime account. These are questions executives said they get “literally every day,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
While fans of the store are no doubt excited by the prospect of Costco deliveries, shares in the company still fell six 6 percent, according to Reuters.
This story was originally published October 06, 2017 3:43 PM.