Dive Brief:

• Delivery startup Instacart is now established in Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota, its 18th market nationally, providing same-day grocery delivery for Cub Foods and Target. Customers can order from the two stores for a combined grocery delivery.

• Drugstore retailer Walgreens is expanding its partnership with delivery startup Postmates, which operates in 30 cities, expanding the number of items that customers can order for same-day delivery.

• And Wal-Mart is expanding a free grocery pickup service to five more of its stores in northwest Arkansas.

Dive Insight:

There are so many on-demand delivery startups for alcohol, grocery, meals, and retail purchases that many customers in certain areas of the U.S. can now stay home or at work and have at hand just about anything they might need or want at a moment's notice. 

Postmates and Instacart in particular are expanding rapidly across the U.S., beyond the biggest metropolitan areas like New York and their hometown of San Francisco to other cities. For now, considering that the logistics involve mostly drivers, cyclists, and delivery folk taking public transportation, the services are largely an urban phenomenon.

The development demonstrates the endurance of these services, though some kind of shake-out among the services is likely some time in the future. And it’s not clear how lucrative these businesses, which continue to attract investor funding, will be in the long run.

For now, though, same-day delivery is hot and getting hotter, in more places than ever.