Walmart to Deliver Your Dunkin' Donuts, a Move Rivals Describe as 'A Lot of Donuts'

BENTONVILLE, ARK. — Walmart on Thursday confirmed it will begin delivering Dunkin’ coffee and doughnuts to roughly 10,000 locations by next year, in the latest expansion of a food-delivery push that has competitors describing the situation as “a lot of donuts” and, in one case, as “a thing that is happening.”

The deal follows an earlier partnership to deliver Subway sandwiches and positions the nation’s largest retailer as a direct competitor to the two companies that built their entire business models on the premise that people would pay a premium to have another person drive food to their door.

The logic, the company explains, is that Walmart already has the vans, the drivers, and the customers, all of whom are, statistically, standing in a parking lot at the exact moment they are thinking about breakfast. “We are not disrupting anyone,” a spokesperson said. “We are just redundant to them in a way that is, frankly, more efficient.”

Food-delivery analysts described the move as “significant” and “a real threat,” two words that, in this industry, are generally said in the same breath and in the same slightly worried tone. The two companies targeted by the expansion, DoorDash and Uber Eats, declined to comment specifically but both issued statements that, when read side by side, amounted to a very polite “we saw this coming.”

The economics of the deal rest on a simple observation: a delivery driver is already going to be in a neighborhood anyway, and a coffee cup occupies approximately no additional space in the van. “This is not a new business,” one analyst noted. “This is an existing business that has decided to stop leaving money on the table. The table, in this case, is a checkout aisle.”

At press time, Walmart said the first deliveries would roll out in a small number of markets “this fall,” a phrase that, in corporate language, means “soon, but we will have a press release about it first.”