Walmart Launches Restaurant Delivery via Subway Integration

Walmart has officially integrated restaurant delivery into its Express Delivery service, starting with a partnership with Subway. This move allows customers to order prepared meals alongside their grocery and household items for rapid delivery, often within 30 minutes. By merging quick-service restaurant (QSR) options with its existing logistics network, Walmart aims to increase basket sizes and compete more effectively in the high-speed delivery market.

Subway serves as the inaugural restaurant partner for Walmart's expanded rapid delivery initiative, allowing customers to order meals either independently or as part of a larger grocery order. Currently available at select stores in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, the service is slated to expand to approximately 1,400 locations by the end of the summer. To facilitate this, Subway began requiring its franchisees located within Walmart stores to participate in the retailer's third-party delivery program as of June 1, with orders routed directly through the restaurant's point-of-sale system.

The integration is a strategic extension of Walmart Express Delivery, a service launched in 2020 that offers delivery windows as short as 30 minutes, alongside three-hour and extended-hour options. By embedding Subway’s menu directly into the Walmart app and website, the retailer provides a seamless experience where shoppers can customize meals and add them to their digital carts. This functionality is part of a broader effort to leverage Walmart's same-day service, which the company reports now reaches approximately 95% of all U.S. households.

This expansion into prepared meal delivery comes as competition intensifies within the grocery and meal delivery sectors. Walmart’s push for speed and variety directly counters Amazon’s recent expansion of same-day perishables delivery, which includes its own 30-minute fulfillment goal for millions of shoppers. Furthermore, as traditional warehouse clubs like Sam’s Club and Costco report rising food sales and discount grocers like Aldi and Grocery Outlet rapidly add new locations, Walmart’s move to bundle QSR meals with groceries represents a significant attempt to capture a larger share of the consumer's total food spend.