Mike Danford

“That can easily increase the frequency of orders per customer. Furthermore, the doughnut and the coffee aren't the product. They're the reason someone opens the Walmart app at 6 or 7 a.m. instead of once a week to order a few grocery items,”

Mike Danford · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Danford said coffee and doughnuts can increase order frequency by giving customers a reason to open the Walmart app daily rather than weekly.

“Delivering from a restaurant inside your own building isn't restaurant-only delivery. It's simply adding one more item to shopping carts off your own shelf, and the Spark driver was already there staging a grocery order,”

Mike Danford · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Danford said delivering from an in-store restaurant is simply adding another item to a Walmart shopping cart, not true restaurant delivery.

“Once you leave your own building, the attachment breaks, and you're essentially running pure delivery economics against DoorDash and Uber Eats, who have already occupied that ground,”

Mike Danford · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Danford said Walmart's phase two of delivering from outside its store footprint puts it in direct competition with DoorDash and Uber Eats.

“On a standalone basis, coffee and doughnut delivery is one of the worst baskets in the business. Low order value, temperature-sensitive, time-critical. It's next to impossible to profit on just delivering a single-serve coffee by itself, but that's not what Walmart is doing,”

Mike Danford · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Danford said standalone coffee and doughnut delivery is unprofitable but Walmart is attaching it to existing grocery trips.

“They're simply attaching a coffee to a grocery order on a trip that was already happening,”

Mike Danford · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-05

Danford added that Walmart is simply attaching a coffee order to a grocery trip that was already happening.