Forget Drones—Walmart Sets Its Sights on Customers’ Kitchens

It follows a 2017 pilot in Silicon Valley with smart-home access company August Home and last-mile delivery company Deliv, which also ferried groceries into participants’ homes—and perishables into their refrigerators.

This time around, instead of limiting the service to consumers with smart homes from specific providers and relying on third-party delivery personnel, Walmart is tapping into its own resources.

That includes associates who have been with a store for at least a year and go through “an extensive training program which prepares them to enter customers’ homes with the same care and respect with which they would treat a friend’s or family’s home—not to mention how to select the freshest grocery items and organize the most efficient refrigerator,” as well as “smart entry technology and a proprietary,...