Walmart has begun directing its Spark delivery drivers to pick up and deliver restaurant orders from eateries inside its stores, a quiet but significant expansion that puts the retail giant in direct competition with Uber Eats, DoorDash, and the rest of the food-delivery industry.
The rollout appears to have started last week at select locations, the Daily Mail reported, citing an in-app message and email viewed by Business Insider. Spark drivers received notifications that they could soon expect restaurant delivery offers from participating restaurants located inside Walmart stores in their areas.
The move matters because Walmart already has what its competitors spent years and billions of dollars trying to build: a massive last-mile delivery network anchored by 4,600 U.S. stores. Adding restaurant meals to the same delivery runs that carry groceries and general merchandise is a straightforward way to squeeze more revenue out of infrastructure that already exists.
Walmart launched Spark in 2018 as a crowdsourced delivery platform, essentially its own version of the gig-driver model that Uber and DoorDash popularized. Spark now operates across all Walmart stores nationwide to fulfill online orders.
The platform surpassed $150 billion in global sales for the first time last fiscal year. That figure dwarfs what most standalone delivery apps generate and reflects the sheer volume of goods moving through Walmart's system.
Gridwise data cited in the reporting shows Spark drivers earn a median of $21.74 per hour in total trip pay. That compares favorably to rival delivery apps, including Uber Eats, where drivers typically make between $10 and $18 an hour. For gig workers choosing where to spend their time, that pay gap is a recruiting advantage Walmart can exploit as it adds restaurant orders to the mix.
Walmart's broader logistics ambitions have been expanding steadily through unmarked delivery depots and other infrastructure moves designed to close the gap with Amazon on speed and reach.
An email quoted by Business Insider told Spark drivers plainly what to expect:
"You may start seeing restaurant delivery offers from participating restaurants located inside Walmart stores in your area, offering more ways to earn."
An in-app message viewed by Business Insider described orders that could include "items like meals, sides, or drinks." The language suggests restaurant deliveries could be batched alongside traditional Walmart merchandise orders, a model that would improve route efficiency and reduce per-order delivery costs.
For customers, Walmart already offers same-day delivery for a $9.95 fee. Walmart+ members have that charge waived as part of their subscription. Whether restaurant orders carry additional fees or fall under the same pricing structure is not yet clear.
Walmart declined to comment to the Daily Mail. A spokesperson said in an email that the company is "currently in our quiet period ahead of earnings."
The restaurant delivery rollout focuses on eateries already operating inside Walmart locations. That detail is worth noting. Walmart isn't building a marketplace of thousands of independent restaurants the way DoorDash or Uber Eats operates. It's leveraging tenants already under its roof.
One example: Wienerschnitzel, the California-based hot dog chain, announced plans last year to expand into Walmart locations across the western U.S. Chains like that give Walmart a ready-made menu of food options without the complexity of onboarding outside restaurants scattered across cities.
The approach fits Walmart's broader pattern of turning its physical stores into multi-purpose fulfillment hubs. The company has also opened its delivery network to outside brands like The Home Depot and Sur La Table, generating logistics revenue from partners who lack their own last-mile capability. The shift in how Walmart stores function for everyday shoppers has been accelerating across multiple fronts.
The restaurant delivery push comes as Walmart reshapes its internal operations. On May 12, the company told employees it was restructuring parts of its global technology and product teams after determining some workers were handling overlapping projects.
Walmart recently announced it was cutting roughly 1,000 employees as part of that streamlining effort. For a company with approximately 1.6 million U.S. workers, the nation's largest private employer, that number is a rounding error in headcount terms. But the restructuring signals a deliberate push to eliminate redundancy and redirect resources toward growth areas like delivery and artificial intelligence.
Last year, Walmart hired Daniel Danker, a former Instacart executive, to lead its global AI acceleration efforts. An internal memo described Danker working alongside chief technology officer Suresh Kumar to streamline operations and improve team efficiency. The Instacart connection is telling, Danker comes from a company that built its entire business on grocery delivery logistics, and now he's applying that experience at a scale Instacart could never match.
Relocations for employees affected by the restructuring were reportedly centered around Walmart's hubs in Bentonville and Northern California.
Uber Eats and DoorDash built their businesses by solving a specific problem: getting restaurant food to customers who didn't want to leave home. They did it by assembling armies of gig drivers and charging restaurants steep commission fees that have drawn years of complaints from small business owners.
Walmart's approach sidesteps much of that friction. Its drivers are already on the road. Its stores already house restaurants. Its customers already use the app for groceries. Adding a meal to an existing delivery run doesn't require a new driver, a new route, or a new customer acquisition campaign.
The competitive dynamics in retail logistics have drawn attention across the industry. Even Target recently recruited a former Walmart supply chain veteran to overhaul its own delivery operations, a sign of how seriously rivals take what Walmart has built.
Whether Walmart can scale restaurant delivery into a serious challenger to the established food-delivery platforms remains an open question. The company hasn't disclosed how many locations are participating, how many orders have been completed, or whether this is a limited pilot or the start of a broader national rollout.
Several important details remain unconfirmed. Walmart hasn't said whether the restaurant delivery option is available to all customers or only to Walmart+ subscribers. It hasn't clarified whether restaurants outside Walmart stores will eventually be included. And the number of Spark drivers who have received restaurant delivery offers hasn't been disclosed.
The quiet-period explanation for Walmart's silence makes sense on its face, publicly traded companies routinely limit public statements ahead of earnings reports. But it also means the company is letting its drivers and an in-app message do the talking while keeping its strategic cards close.
Across the Walmart ecosystem, changes keep coming at a steady clip. Sam's Club recently raised membership prices even as household budgets remain tight, and the parent company continues to reshape how its stores, workers, and technology interact.
For American consumers, more competition in food delivery is straightforward good news. Uber Eats and DoorDash have operated in a market with limited pressure on fees and delivery charges. A competitor with 4,600 locations, an existing driver network, and $150 billion in delivery sales has the leverage to change that.
For the delivery platforms, the threat is real even if Walmart starts small. The company's history shows a pattern: test quietly, refine the model, then roll it out everywhere at once. That's how Spark went from a 2018 launch to a nationwide operation.
When the country's biggest private employer decides your business model fits neatly inside its existing infrastructure, that's not a side project. That's a warning shot.