The March 2020 integration plan
Walmart announced on March 5, 2020, that it was integrating Walmart Grocery into its main shopping app and would bring grocery shopping into its desktop and mobile website. The change aimed to combine shopping experiences that had previously required customers to use separate apps and websites.
In the announcement, Walmart chief customer officer Janey Whiteside described a phased app rollout, with some customers already receiving the updated experience. Website integration was planned for the following weeks, while the separate Walmart Grocery app was scheduled for retirement that summer.
Those were different stages of the transition, not a single completed launch. Walmart’s announcement did not establish when every customer would receive the app update or give an exact date for the grocery app’s shutdown.
A May update on adoption and migration
In a follow-up dated May 20, 2020, Whiteside said half of Walmart’s online grocery orders were already being placed through the combined experience. That was a company-reported measure of adoption, rather than independent evidence that shopping had become easier.
Walmart also described how existing grocery-app customers would make the move: their information and shopping carts would transfer after they downloaded the main Walmart app and signed in. The company presented the transfer as a way to preserve customers’ existing shopping activity during the switch.
The combined app also brought shopping alongside store tools, including Walmart Pay, store maps and item search, according to the company.
Consolidation, with separate milestones
The practical significance was a reduction in the number of destinations customers needed to navigate: grocery orders, other merchandise and store services could sit within the same app. That describes the design of the integration, not a measured improvement in customer outcomes.
The May adoption figure showed use of the combined experience, according to Walmart. Neither announcement established the actual completion date for the website changes or the separate grocery app’s retirement.