Bed Bath & Beyond to extend curbside pickup hours

Dive Brief:

To strengthen its position as an omnichannel retailer, Bed Bath & Beyond on Thursday will begin offering consumers the option to pick up online orders before stores open.
The retailer is allowing customers to retrieve online purchases from stores beginning at 8 a.m., an hour before Bed Bath & Beyond typically opens, according to a company press release.
For all curbside and buy online, pick up in store purchases, Bed Bath & Beyond has reduced the time it takes for an order to be ready from two hours to one.

Dive Insight:

The extended hours for curbside pickup is Bed Bath & Beyond's latest step toward its goal of becoming a "digital-first, omni-always retailer."

The retailer on Wednesday also announced it has formed a partnership with crowdsourced delivery platform Roadie, making same-day delivery available to almost twice as many zip codes.

"We are excited to further reinvent digital services like Same Day Delivery and Buy Online Pickup Curbside or In-Store to get orders in the hands of our customers even sooner," Rafeh Masood, executive vice president and chief digital officer of Bed Bath & Beyond, said in a statement. "The country is getting 'back to normal' and we want to give consumers expanded flexibility on how to get online orders, within hours. Whether that means placing a last-minute Same Day Delivery order to better entertain this summer or picking up an online order on the way to work, we are finding new innovative ways to meet the evolving needs of today's digital customers."

More consumers shifted their spending online as the pandemic took hold, accelerating the need for retailers to build out their digital capabilities. Bed Bath & Beyond in April last year introduced curbside pickup at its Harmon stores and introduced BOPIS and curbside pickup to all of its BuyBuyBaby and Bed Bath & Beyond stores in Canada. It then expanded its curbside offering to around 1,350 stores, making the service available to 90% of its fleet in the U.S. and Canada.

Bed Bath & Beyond, in the fall, announced plans to continue building out its online business even post-pandemic. The company initially revealed its goals to invest more in technology and build out the omnichannel shopping experience in October as part of its broader three-year turnaround plan. The retailer has previously partnered with other same-day delivery services like Shipt, DoorDash and Instacart in an effort to get products to consumers faster.

The investments, so far, appear to be paying off. In the first quarter, Bed Bath & Beyond reported digital sales represented 38% of total net sales, and of those sales, around 31% were fulfilled by stores using services like same-day delivery, curbside pickup or BOPIS.