Kroger goes to school for grocery pickup at the University of Kentucky

November 01, 2022

Kroger has opened a grocery pickup point for University of Kentucky students.

“Everyone is busy juggling work and household responsibilities, with groceries being one of those chores. Now University of Kentucky employees and students can check that shopping job off their bucket list before they go home,” according to a Press release.

Users create an account on Kroger.com, make purchases, choose the Kroger Field parking lot as their preferred pickup location, and select one of the pickup windows available on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. (In 2017, Kroger secured the naming rights to the Kentucky Wildcats football stadium.)

The initiative merges retail experiences with grocery pickup points and feeder colleges, both of which have faced challenges.

Grocers have largely assigned their pick-up points inside or outside their stores.

Beginner in the mid-2010s, the pilots of self-contained grocery pickup locations were from walmart, Crossroads and At Ahold Delhaize Peapod received some media coverage, but most were quickly quietly dropped. Peapod’s 2016 experiment tested drop points at three subway stations in Washington, DC.

Walmart continues to test a grocery pickup point in Chicago Lincolnwood suburb.

During the last years, Target opened several small stores near college campuses in line with its expansion into urban markets.

In 2017, Amazon opened five “Instant Pickup” stores measuring approximately 3,000 square feet in university communities that offered students essentials like snacks, drinks, and phone chargers to pick up within two minutes, plus the ability to order and pick up any Amazon item in-store within regular delivery times. The pilot ended in 2018.

walmart had operated a number of Walmart on Campus locations under 3,000 square feet on college campuses, but now operates only one at the University of Arizona, which includes online Walmart order pickup .