Target buys Birmingham based Shipt for $550M in war against Amazon and Whole Foods
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Birmingham based grocery delivery company acquired
Target announced Wednesday morning that they are acquiring Shipt for $550M. Shipt is a national grocery delivery company, founded and based right here in Birmingham, Alabama.
Convenience
Shipt is a grocery delivery company whose catch phrase is
more time, less stress.
They will deliver your order to your home or work, usually on the same day, sometimes in as soon as one hour!
No need to put down your winter-read or layer on the warm clothes to drive across town. For $99 per year, a customer can get unlimited deliveries from their select partners.
Target’s Future
Target will offer the Shipt delivery service for about half of its stores by early 2018, and will join the list of Shipt retail partners. Shipt will continue to remain committed to the partners they currently deliver for.
Target plans to keep Shipt as an independent subsidiary. Target has worked with Instacart, another grocery delivery service, but the acquisition of Shipt will likely impact that relationship.
Delivery Wars?
The war of delivery services continues to heat-up. Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion this past August. Target’s acquisition of Shipt means Amazon and Whole Foods will see some healthy competition!
The app
The company has an incredibly effective app, and a sophisticated website that’s easy to navigate.
With their unlimited free delivery on orders over $35, this service might just get habit-forming. And they just started delivery from Costco for the Birmingham market!
Be sure to take note of Shipt’s impressive headquarters downtown. Hard to miss their logo atop one of our tallest buildings!
Shipt was founded in 2014 by Bill Smith, its CEO, in Birmingham, Alabama. Currently 170 employees work there in the Birmingham and San Francisco locations.
“We believe that if you deliver groceries, you can deliver anything,” Smith exclaimed.
Oh, and Target’s stock is up about 2% on the NYSE.
Have you used Shipt’s service?
