Walmart Courts Restaurant Delivery, and DoorDash Should at Least Watch

Walmart moved from zero to thousands of restaurant delivery locations in three months this summer, signing Subway, Dunkin' and Papa Johns and calling itself a "rapidly emerging contender in the restaurant delivery business." That's a bold claim from a company that isn't a restaurant delivery company — yet. But the numbers underneath it explain why DoorDash, which holds 67% of U.S. food delivery sales, can't dismiss the move.

Start with what Walmart actually brings. E-commerce sales hit $150.4 billion in fiscal 2026, up more than 24% year over year — about a fifth of total revenue. Only Amazon sells more online in the U.S. Store-fulfilled delivery sales grew 43% year over year last quarter, and 37% of those orders arrived in under three hours. Walmart says it can now reach 96% of the U.S. population in under three hours, and 60% in under 30 minutes.

Who carries the food?

Much of the volume rides on Spark, Walmart's gig driver network launched in 2018. Walmart won't say how big it is, but a 2026 legal settlement discloses the scale: more than 1 million drivers have completed more than 272 million deliveries. DoorDash and Uber Eats each report about 7 million active couriers. So Walmart's fleet is smaller — but it's real, it's paid for, and it already runs grocery routes daily.

"We are talking a double-digit billion dollar business in delivery, with underlying support from this [Spark] network that they are trying to expand," said Sarang Vora, an analyst with Telsey Advisory Group. "So I think the whole puzzle fits very well for Walmart going in this direction."

Why restaurants said yes

The economics are simple. About 150 million Americans shop at Walmart every week, and more than 500 million people visit its website monthly — the most of any traditional retailer, per Capital One Shopping data. Restaurants pay hefty commissions to DoorDash and Uber Eats and often mark up menu prices to cover them. Walmart's Subway delivery prices will match Subway's in-store menus. That's a direct hit at the third-party apps' pricing model.

Papa Johns, with more than 3,000 stores, is still integrating the technology. But a "vast majority" of its locations sit within the required 7-mile delivery radius of a Walmart, said global CMO Chris Lyn-Sue. He called the delivery contract "favorable" and "built for the long-term," and said a majority of customers arriving through Walmart would likely be new to the brand.

"It opens up the spectrum and the gamut for the people that we're engaging with," Lyn-Sue said.

What the basket data shows

The strategic play is basket-building, not standalone takeout. Since launching delivery with in-store Subways in June, 65% of those orders included other Walmart items. That's the attachment rate that matters: a sub or pizza tagged onto a grocery order densifies delivery routes and spreads fixed costs.

"As the [e-commerce] business grows, we become efficient... We densify our first mile, our mid-mile, our last mile. That lowers our cost to operate," said David Guggina, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference last month.

"This is creating stickiness in their app," said Yash Babar, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. "Their play is to increase the amount of things that you can do, whether you do them or not."

Can Walmart catch DoorDash?

Probably not soon. DoorDash held 67% of food delivery sales as of April 2024, per Bloomberg SecondMeasure, with Uber Eats at 25% and Grubhub at 8%. Those apps carry deep inventories of local independent restaurants that Walmart can't quickly replicate — and they're pushing into groceries and retail themselves, including delivery from Walmart stores.

"DoorDash is very deep into the system," Vora said. "The depth is probably hard to catch up with in the near future for Walmart."

Babar expects the market to split rather than shake out: "It's cutting up the pie slightly more, rather than competing each other out of the market." Telsey's Joe Feldman is more bullish on the challenger: "They're going to keep fighting."

Execution risk remains real. Mixed orders — Walmart items plus a made-to-order pizza — demand tight coordination on prep, pickup, routing and driver timing, which Walmart says it is handling with technology as it moves beyond in-store restaurants. More brands arrive "in the coming months," the company says, insisting it is "just getting started." If attachment rates hold as the brand list grows, the restaurants' next commission negotiation with DoorDash just got a new talking point.