Walmart has dropped the $35 minimum order limit on its Express delivery service. The Express delivery service is currently available at 3,000 Walmart stores and delivers items to customers in less than two hours. It will, however, continue to cost $10 plus a delivery charge, unless you're a member of Walmart+, in which case you'll only pay $10 for an order. Walmart says its Express delivery service reaches 70% of the US population. The change came into effect Monday (1 March).
Now click or scroll on to see some other big American companies making major changes to their operations.
Amazon is greatly benefiting from the coronavirus pandemic as stay-at-home orders have led online shopping to go through the roof. Needless to say, the e-commerce behemoth is fast-tracking the construction of a number of fulfilment centers, including new warehouse facilities in Delaware (pictured) and Brisbane, Australia. Last fall, Amazon also announced plans for new state-of-the-art fulfilment centers in Mississippi, and a second warehouse in Melbourne, Australia.
After reporting a $3.2 billion (£2.6bn) loss in June last year, COVID-19 prompted Starbucks to double down on the rollout of its new pickup-only store concept, which lets customers pre-order via the firm's app and grab their pumpkin spice lattes and caramel macchiatos from streamlined, takeout-only outlets. The move comes from research pre-pandemic that found that 80% of Starbucks orders were to take out. Already, two cities – New York and Toronto – boast pickup-only stores, and hundreds more are set to open in North America before the end of 2021.
Despite coronavirus having an initially negative impact on the construction timetable of Tesla's first European Gigafactory near Grünheide in Germany (pictured), the electric carmaker has since forged ahead, with a tight deadline of mid-2021 imposed by company CEO Elon Musk. Once completed, the mega-factory is set to create 10,000 new jobs, which is more than the small German town’s entire population currently, and produce around 500,000 cars each year. The demand for Tesla cars in Europe is expected to increase, as the pandemic has renewed focus on green issues, especially now that stricter emissions regulations have come into force in Europe.
Elon Musk has also fast-tracked moving Tesla's operations from Silicon Valley, California to Texas, and has himself already moved down south following confrontation with Californian officials in May last year. This came after they refused to allow the eccentric billionaire to reopen his Gigafactory at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. Musk described the pandemic-related closure as “the final straw” on Twitter, and is one of many bosses who have determined Texas as a good alternative to the high taxes, expensive housing and stringent government regulations that come with working in California.
Staying with leading US tech companies, Microsoft is relocating the production of its Surface desktop PCs, notebooks and tablets from China to partner factories in northern Vietnam according to Nikkei Asian Review. The risk-mitigating move was finalized during the second quarter of last year.
Microsoft has also brought forward plans to shut 83 of its physical stores. The move away from bricks-and-mortar business has actually cost the tech giant $450 million in taxes, but is seen as a strategic decision that will pay off in the long term. It will keep several physical locations open in cities such as New York, Sydney, London (pictured) and Redmond, Washington, but as experience centers where potential customers can try out Microsoft products rather than buy them.
Drone company Zipline has been able to fast-track plans to deliver medical supplies and PPE to Novant Health hospitals in North Carolina after the Federal Aviation Administration granted the firm an emergency temporary waiver as a result of the pandemic. The trailblazing service, the first of its kind in the US, was slated to start in October but got off the ground in May, months ahead of schedule. And it isn’t just medical equipment being dispatched by drone – Walmart has also recently secured a deal with Zipline to pilot grocery deliveries from one of its Arkansas stores.
In-person dates were suddenly off the table when COVID-19 struck, leaving the dating app industry in a bit of a quandary. Some apps were ahead of the game, such as Bumble, which had already introduced in-app video and face calls in 2019, allowing virtual dates to take place. The rest of the industry was quick to follow after user growth fell in the first quarter of 2020. Hinge introduced a ‘Date from Home’ video feature in May, while Tinder added ‘Face to Face’ calls in October.
Demand for adult education and retraining has grown significantly during the pandemic. US upskilling platform Degreed has seen record interest in the last year, and the upswing in demand has enabled the firm to secure $32 million in funding to fast-track upskilling, reskilling and redeployment of workers at scale.
With movie theaters shuttered around the world, major studios have put back theatrical releases. In contrast, streaming services such as Disney+ are fast-tracking their schedule. The production of the movie version of award-winning Broadway musical Hamilton was brought forward and the film premiered on 3 July, more than three months ahead of schedule.
Disney also announced an abundance of new projects set to reach our screens in the next decade, as the huge success of Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian has opened “an entirely new era” for the franchise, according to Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy. The next 10 years will see 10 new Star Wars series and 10 new Marvel series launched exclusively on Disney+, as the company looks to hold onto the momentum gained by the streaming service during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Retailers that may have delayed introducing contactless payment options have had to roll them out sooner than anticipated to enable their customers to stay as safe as possible during the pandemic. Publix, for instance, launched contactless payments at its 1,200 stores in the southeast of the country due to COVID-19. There has been a global push to increase the usage of contactless. Many see this as speeding up the move towards a cashless society.