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This is part one of a three-part series on grocery delivery infrastructure. Part two covers the cost of outsourcing. Part three looks at how to build infrastructure that scales.
The most important thing happening in grocery right now is not what is on the shelves. It is how fast, how accurately and how profitably that shelf can show up at someone's door.
The center of gravity in grocery is shifting toward delivery. Shoppers are not waiting for their next weekly trip. They are ordering online, setting delivery preferences, joining membership programs, and choosing the grocers that make shopping faster.
The national players have set a new standard. Their delivery programs now reach nearly every US household, backed by infrastructure that gives them control over fulfillment, customer data and loyalty. They have reshaped what shoppers expect from everyone else.
Many regional grocers are still weighing whether delivery is worth the investment. While they hesitate, the gap grows, and so does the risk of losing relevance.
There is now a better option than the old choice between handing the customer to a third-party platform and building a fleet. The right infrastructure and orchestration let a grocer take back control of delivery without taking on the full cost of running every van. This post lays out what is at stake, and what comes next: how delivery became the primary customer touchpoint, what owning the experience is worth, the four stages of delivery maturity, and why orchestration is now the foundation for growth.
While in-store growth plateaus, delivery is accelerating. Grocery sales grew 3 percent year over year in May 2025. Delivery grew 70 percent in the same period, to $3.9 billion, and now accounts for 45.4 percent of all eGrocery sales, up 13 points on the year before.
The biggest players have built on that shift. Walmart reaches more than 95 percent of US households with delivery windows under three hours. Amazon is investing $4 billion to bring same-day service to 4,000 rural towns. Delivery sits at the core of their growth and loyalty strategies.
The message to regional grocers is plain: delivery is where the customers are. When the experience is fast and reliable, shoppers come back. For many of them, delivery is the first and most frequent way they meet a grocery brand. If that experience is slow, clunky, or carries someone else's name, the impression sticks, and in a crowded market it can be the reason a customer leaves.
Until recently, grocers faced a hard trade. Hand the customer relationship to a third-party platform, or take on the full cost and complexity of running delivery alone. That has changed.
Delivery is no longer a service channel. It is the storefront. Online grocery now accounts for 8 to 10 percent of total grocery sales, and delivery is growing faster than that. So the questions a grocer should ask are these:
This is where orchestration comes in. An orchestration platform lets a grocer route orders, choose among providers (its own fleet, 3PLs, courier networks) and keep the experience consistent, without building a fleet first. That control protects margin and keeps the things that compound: first-party data, repeat business and new digital revenue. Once delivery is under control it opens the door to a branded ordering experience, customer communications the grocer runs, and the groundwork for a retail media business. Most of all, the grocer keeps the customer.
In May 2025, delivery accounted for 45.4 percent of eGrocery sales. Monthly active delivery users grew three times faster than the overall eGrocery market, while pickup declined 3.6 percent in sales even as more customers used it. Walmart's online grocery user base is growing 1.5x faster than the market, which is what owned, orchestrated delivery looks like at scale.
Owning the delivery experience gives a grocer a direct line to the customer, control over quality, and the data that drives loyalty and revenue. In a market where delivery is becoming the primary touchpoint, ownership is the path to long-term differentiation.
Every grocer sits somewhere on a delivery maturity curve. Four stages describe the mindset, the infrastructure, the risks and the rewards. The longer a business stays in the middle two, the more inertia it builds. What started as a short-term fix becomes a long-term constraint: processes lock in, customer data stays fragmented, and the gap widens. Five years can pass inside a system that was meant to be temporary.
The delivery maturity curve
Usually 0 to 2 years
Hesitant to invest, because bandwidth is limited or because in-store still feels dominant.
What it gives you
The risk over time
Usually 2 to 5 years, often longer
A single third-party platform and provider, chosen to meet customer expectations quickly with no internal build.
What it gives you
The risk over time
Usually 2 to 5 years
Orders routed across more than one provider on basic rules, cost or distance, with little coordination.
What it gives you
The risk over time
Ongoing
Delivery aligned with business goals. The grocer owns the experience, the data and the economics through orchestrated control.
What it gives you
What it asks of you
The takeaway: time in stage matters. Grocers that build orchestration into delivery early can evolve with the market. Those who linger in the middle stages find themselves boxed in by systems that cannot carry long-term growth or loyalty. Nobody has to go all in on day one. But the tools have to give more control, more visibility and a clearer path to the next stage. Stage four is not about matching the biggest players' infrastructure. It is about building systems that move the business forward and keep moving it.
Four questions place a grocer on the curve. The result reads back what the stage gives, what it costs over time, and the next moves.
Where are you on the curve?
Answer all four to see your stage
Delivery drives the biggest gains in grocery. It shapes how often customers return, how much they spend, and where their loyalty goes. It also powers high-margin growth through retail media and personalized promotions. Online grocery is projected to make up 20 percent of total US grocery sales by 2026, nearly double 2022. Retail media is expected to reach $74 billion in the same year. And 59 percent of shoppers say delivery availability directly influences where they buy groceries. Delivery is projected to surpass half of online grocery volume by the end of the decade.
The grocers that treat delivery as a growth strategy, and own the decision about how each order reaches the door, are the ones setting the standard. Part two looks at what it costs to hand that decision to someone else.