Walmart wants associates, not gig workers, to deliver more orders as the retailer struggles to verify the identity of its Spark drivers

• Walmart is trying to get store workers to deliver more of its online orders, CEO Doug McMillon said.
• It could signal a shift after Walmart spent years recruiting gig workers for its Spark Driver service.
• The retailer is growing its own delivery business after Walmart ended a partnership with DoorDash last year.

Walmart has attracted hundreds of thousands of gig workers to make deliveries through its Spark Driver app. But now, it’s trying to get store associates to make more deliveries themselves.

“We’ll have associates doing more deliveries,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Tuesday at a retail conference hosted by Goldman Sachs.

“Right now, the number of associate deliveries is relatively small — very small compared to what happens with independent contractors on various platforms, including the Spark platform,” he added.

Spark “is the biggest portion of our delivery business in the US at the moment,” McMillon said. Walmart did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on McMillon’s comments.

Walmart has attracted hundreds of thousands of gig workers to Spark since it started the service in 2018. Spark functions similarly to Instacart, DoorDash, and other apps: Independent contractors shop and deliver orders to customers’ homes.

“Hundreds of thousands” of workers have delivered orders through Spark in the five years since Walmart launched the service, the retailer said in a blog post this June. The number of Spark drivers tripled alone in the year between mid-2022 and mid-2023, according to the post.

At the same time, Walmart has cut back on its partnerships with some third-party delivery services. Last summer, for example, Walmart parted ways with DoorDash after the service spent four years delivering orders for the retailer.

But Spark workers have faced challenges on the app. Some previously told Insider that some drivers are using identities other than their own to pick up and deliver orders. Other Spark drivers staged a protest in June about bots, or programs that drivers use to claim orders before other people. Using bots violates Walmart’s policies for Spark drivers, the company previously told Insider.

Some Spark drivers have also told Insider that their earnings have declined in recent months, both because of drivers using shady practices and because of greater competition with those following Walmart’s policies.

Other gig workers reported a similar decline in earnings after Instacart cut base pay for its independent contractors to a minimum of $4 per group of orders. Previously, the company paid a minimum of $7.

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