BENTONVILLE, AR - Online grocery delivery is no joke, and in order to keep up with Amazon, many are making aggressive moves. Just last week, Sprouts Farmers Market announced it was dropping its Amazon Prime Now delivery partnership in order to expand the breadth of its delivery reach. This week, in a similar move, Walmart announced it will no longer be partnering with Uber and Lyft for its own online grocery delivery endeavors.

According to Reuters, despite being one of its largest partners for its ‘Rush’ service, Walmart has dropped Uber as a partner as it was hindering the retailer rather than boosting it ahead in the race with Amazon. In addition, Uber’s vision to quickly and efficiently deliver anything on-demand, including both people and goods like groceries, at the touch of a smartphone app was not reaching its full potential with Walmart.

“It is incredibly hard to deliver people and packages together,” said a source from a delivery company that works with Walmart, according to Reuters. “They are two completely different business models.”

This news comes as a shock as Walmart recently revealed Uber would be integral in plans to deliver groceries to more than 40 percent of the country.

“Customers shouldn’t notice any difference as the transition takes place,” said Walmart's Director, National Media Relations, Molly Blakeman, in an email to Bloomberg. While choosing not to elaborate on the reasoning behind the decision, Blakeman did note that Walmart will use other delivery service providers in the four markets where it had previously used Uber.

Uber spokeswoman Ellen Cohn told Reuters that the company had stopped the grocery partnership after informing Walmart in March that it would no longer participate in delivery operations after June 30. Instead, Uber will now focus on expanding its newer services like Uber Eats.

“We are coordinating with Walmart to make this change as seamless as possible,” said Cohn.

Blakeman also added that the partnership with Lyft never went beyond the initial Denver test market, and thus was not benefitting the company as well. Lyft declined to comment.

After recently joining forces with startups Deliv, Postmates, and DoorDash, will Walmart replace Uber and Lyft with these other partnerships? And will the retailer’s latest move give it an edge over competitor Amazon? AndNowUKnow will continue to report.

Walmart