Grocery delivery is becoming one more modern convenience. Grocery store shoppers can now fulfill their food and essential needs with a few taps on their smartphones, scheduling delivery (or pickup) and eliminating one more trip to a local store.

When grocery delivery works well, it creates loyalty, saving time and delighting customers. 

But when the system breaks down, whether due to a platform outage or inventory mismatch, the convenience and delight turns into frustration. 

Grocery stores like Kroger, Aldi, Walmart, H-E-B, and more are all striving to make their shopping experience seamless — which includes ensuring that their technology works as expected. 

How do grocery stores use technology to support their delivery offerings? Below, we’ll explore four major grocery delivery services: Kroger, Instacart, Walmart, and Shipt. Each of these grocery delivery services relies on one of two fulfillment models: in-house or third-party. 

In-house grocery delivery fulfillment, as used by Walmart and Kroger, is powered by the retailer's full-time employees and its own technology, giving the retailer more direct control over orders. 

Third-party grocery delivery services like Instacart and Shipt, on the other hand, employ gig economy workers who use their own mobile devices and shopper apps, which brings flexibility but also a layer of complexity to completing orders.

In all cases, grocery delivery models rely on connected products, like handheld scanners, mobile shopping apps, real-time inventory systems, GPS-enabled routing software, and payment processing platforms. These technologies must work in harmony, or even small breakdowns can lead to major disruptions in service.

In-house Fulfillment: Retailer-Driven Integration

Kroger Delivery

Kroger Delivery saves time for busy households with same-day and next-day grocery orders. Through the mobile app, customers can browse items and schedule deliveries — or curbside pickup — to fit their schedules. 

Kroger employees use handheld scanners in-store, which include detailed shopping instructions. The delivery system relies on real-time inventory updates, which require tight integration between Kroger’s point-of-sale (POS) system and online storefront (through the Kroger app). Dynamic routing algorithms support order fulfillment logistics, which optimize delivery schedules.

But these interconnected systems don’t always work as designed. 

For example, should inventory syncing fail, customers may unknowingly place orders for items that are out of stock. Mismatches between online orders and in-store inventory create cascading delays as employees scramble to find substitutions and notify or consult with customers. 

Consider the “nightmare” story of “Eszebel” about their experience with Kroger delivery. They share how, “Orders show up hours late, I get other people's deliveries, produce is straight-up rotted, random items are missing … The last straw came this week, when they canceled an order for no reason, didn't tell me, and then refunded me $10 less than my total.”

Eszebel’s review captures how technical failures led to the perception of Kroger being careless. One takeaway of her experience is that building and maintaining customer trust requires new technology is consistent reliable.

Walmart Grocery Delivery

Walmart+ offers customers unlimited free delivery on groceries and household essentials, making it a cost-effective option for families. Through its app, customers can build orders, access personalized recommendations, and choose from multiple delivery windows. Like Kroger, Walmart stores act as local fulfillment centers to reduce delivery times.

At the heart of Walmart’s services is a sophisticated back-end infrastructure. The Walmart app communicates with store-level inventory systems to provide customers with real-time stock availability, while an AI-driven recommendation engine tailors product suggestions based on shopping history.

Store associates use handheld scanners to locate and pick items from the shelves. Once items are picked, they are staged for delivery drivers, who use GPS-enabled routing software to determine the most efficient delivery paths. Of course Walmart aims to maximize speed and accuracy while minimizing operational costs.

Walmart, like Kroger, faces challenges in meeting — or surpassing — the expectations of their shoppers. Customers report items missing from their orders (likely due to inventory sync failures that the company should be able to catch before they affect customers). For people who rely on Walmart's promise of convenience, these glitches damage trust.

Third-party Fulfillment: Decentralized Networks, Unified Apps

Instacart

Instacart has built a reputation on speed and variety, offering customers the ability to shop from multiple local stores in a single order. Its app provides an intuitive interface where users can browse inventory, apply coupons, and get updates on their order.

Behind the scenes, Instacart’s platform orchestrates a huge amount of data. APIs connect its app to individual retailers’ inventory systems, making sure customers can see accurate stock levels for each store. Real-time GPS tracking lets customers monitor delivery progress, while matchmaking algorithms pair orders with the best available shoppers. 

Managing shoppers adds another layer of complexity, as workers may not be familiar with the layout of every store they visit. To help shoppers complete batches efficiently, Instacart provides item location guidance, substitution suggestions, and direct customer messaging within the app.

This constant connectivity comes with vulnerabilities. Outages during peak demand can prevent customers from placing orders or tracking deliveries. This can stop shoppers from completing active deliveries or communicating with support. 

Shopper posts on Reddit illustrate how this goes down: “I shopped a 350 dollar order and can’t even contact support because I can’t get in the app at all,” a user wrote. 

It’s easy to imagine how interruptions like this lead to spoiled food and confused, frustrated customers. As one customer wrote: “I placed two orders and the app is not giving me any updates. One of the orders got delivered but again it shows as still shopping on my end. My other order doesn’t show that it is confirmed. I’ve been on hold for nearly 30 minutes with Instacart trying to reach their customer service.”

Shipt

Shipt takes a personal approach to grocery delivery, allowing customers to communicate directly with shoppers and make real-time adjustments. This allows for on-the-fly changes, like swapping an out-of-stock item for a similar product. Customers can also make niche requests. For example, they can ask their shopper to get the ripest bananas or avoid goods with too much packaging.

This level of customization requires significant back-end coordination. Shipt’s app must facilitate real-time messaging between customers and shoppers while maintaining a database of available inventory for each store. Payment processing, GPS delivery routing, and shopper ratings are all managed within the app to create a seamless experience for users.

Shipt’s reliance on its app can be a bit of a liability. When the app malfunctions, the entire service comes to a halt. Customers can’t communicate with their shoppers, and shoppers can’t view order or location info. These disruptions can result in incomplete deliveries and leave customers unhappy.

One Shipt Shopper on Reddit described the app crashing in the middle of a busy day: “The app got stuck on me when I was in the middle of at least 6 orders.” That’s six spoiled grocery bundles, six refunds Shipt had to fulfill, and six customers with damaged trust in the brand.

The Role of Remote Device Management (RDM)

Not all grocery delivery is the same. Some services —like Kroger and Walmart — are driven on in-house fulfillment (employees and POS systems). Others — like Shipt and Instacart — rely on gig economy workers and mobile phones (mobile apps integrated with inventory APIs).

Whatever the case, the common thread across these grocery delivery services is their reliance on connected products and integrated technologies. From inventory synchronization to delivery tracking, these systems must work in harmony to provide the experience customers expect. When they don’t, the ripple effect is inevitable: outages, delays, and unhappy customers.

Remote monitoring and management for connected products (RDM) may help. 

Connected product RMM (as with Canopy) enables businesses to remotely observe, manage and troubleshoot, and even automate their technology infrastructure. RMM minimizes downtime and improves service reliability. For example, RMM can identify and address inventory synchronization issues before they affect customers, or deploy updates to apps during off-peak hours to improve stability during critical periods.

The benefits of being able to centrally connect, control, and automate connected products — and maintain the critical integrations of those products to enterprise systems — extends beyond operational efficiency. Using RMM makes it possible to proactively manage their connected ecosystems. That way, whether it’s the handheld scanner or the POS system, the inventory API or the delivery routing technology, everything works as expected. 

Because when any mistake could cost every penny of margin (as with grocery stores), there’s no room for error.