Getting food fast
National grocery chain carts out new delivery service across Austin
Kroger, the country’s biggest traditional grocery chain, is treading on the home turf of Texas-based H-E-B with a new grocery delivery service in the Austin and San Antonio areas.
Kroger won’t open any stores for this expansion. Rather, Kroger will deliver groceries stored at new distribution centers in Austin and San Antonio. Each facility is expected to employ about 160 people.
These new facilities will be served by a 350,000-square-foot Kroger grocery hub in Dallas. The Northeast San Antonio facility will encompass 67,000 square feet, and the Northeast Austin facility will measure 70,000 square feet. Van drivers will be able to deliver groceries within 90 miles of each facility.
Cincinnati-based Kroger is set to kick off grocery delivery in the Austin and San Antonio areas later this year. This service will compete with the likes of H-E-B’s Austin-based Favor delivery platform, Walmart, Amazon/Whole Foods, and Instacart.
The company’s growing delivery network “is enabling Kroger to create thousands of technology, operations, logistics, and customer-care jobs and improve access to fresh food in cities eager for the variety and value offered by Kroger that once could only be accessed through our stores,” Gabriel Arreaga, Kroger’s senior vice president and chief supply chain officer, says in a new release.
Kroger operates more than 200 stores in Texas, including in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas. The company, with almost 2,800 stores in the U.S., posted sales of nearly $138 billion in 2021.