Target’s next-day delivery service, Target Restock, launches nationwide with lower fees

Target is lowering the price of its next-day delivery service for household essentials, Target Restock, which will now be free for Target REDcard purchases and $2.99 for all other orders, as the service expands nationwide. Previously, the service cost $4.99 per order – a price meant to rival Amazon’s Prime Pantry, which today charges a flat shipping fee of $7.99 for orders if customers don’t have the $4.99 monthly subscription that makes orders over $40 ship free.

The price change comes only a year after Target began testing the Restock service in limited markets, and follows the retailer’s recent launch of a free Drive Up service for users of its mobile app. The company is also offering free, two-day shipping on hundreds of thousands of Target orders, and is expanding same-day grocery delivery through its Shipt service, as part of its further efforts in challenging the retail giants, Walmart and Amazon.

Unlike Amazon Prime, Target Restock doesn’t require a membership fee – that an angle Walmart adopted with its free shipping program, too.

With Restock, customers have the ability to shop from an assortment of 35,000 household essentials – think, things like baby food, diapers, paper towels, detergent, health and beauty products, and other packaged goods, like peanut butter or snacks.

To use Restock, customers shop online filling their box – up to 45 lbs, which is about the size of a shopping cart – with their selections. They have up until 7 PM Monday through Friday to place the order, then the box is delivered to their door the next day. (There are no Sunday deliveries. So if a guest orders after 7 PM on Friday or on Saturday before 7 PM, the order arrives at their home Monday. After 7 PM on Saturday or anytime on Sunday, and the delivery is on Tuesday.)

Alternately, customers can shop by voice using their Google Home smart speaker or a smartphone with the Google Assistant app installed, as enabled by Target’s partnership with Google on voice-activated shopping.

Target is able to fill orders quickly because it’s using its retail stores as the fulfillment centers – it stocks the boxes directly from its store shelves.

The company said in September that Restock thenĀ reached over 70 million customers across the U.S., or about one-fifth of the U.S. population. This morning, the retailer says Restock is broadly available coast to coast, reaching more than 75 percent of the U.S. population.