Half Of Sam’s Club’s In-Club Shoppers Start Their Trip On The App. Greg Pulsifer Doesn’t Call That An E-Commerce Win.

Greg Pulsifer, SVP of e-commerce at Sam’s Club, told Progressive Grocer in an interview published May 12 that the retailer no longer thinks about e-commerce as a separate channel. “Members don’t shop channels, they shop needs,” Pulsifer said in the interview, framing the club retailer’s approach as a single seamless member experience rather than a portfolio of distinct shopping options. The interview was conducted before the start of the Walmart and Sam’s Club quiet period on May 1, per a note appended to the Progressive Grocer piece by the publication.

The Numbers Back The Reframing

In Walmart Inc.’s Q4 FY26 earnings release dated February 19, the company reported Sam’s Club U.S. e-commerce sales grew 23% year over year in the quarter ending January 31, with continued strength in club-fulfilled pickup and delivery. The e-commerce contribution to Sam’s Club U.S. comp sales was approximately 380 basis points, up from approximately 280 in the prior-year quarter. The Q4 FY26 earnings presentation, filed with the SEC, separately disclosed that club-fulfilled express delivery sales grew 80% in the quarter and that Sam’s Club now offers club-fulfilled express delivery to 60% of U.S. households in less than three hours. Membership income grew more than 6%. Pulsifer added a figure in the Progressive Grocer interview that Walmart did not disclose in February: nearly two-thirds of Sam’s Club e-commerce is being fulfilled out of a club today, which he called the textbook definition of an omnichannel business.

The App Is The Front Door To The Club

Pulsifer disclosed two additional numbers in the interview that quantify how the digital and physical experiences are reinforcing each other. Half of Sam’s Club members are starting their in-club shopping journey on the company’s app, per Pulsifer, which means the digital experience is driving foot traffic into the club even when purchases happen at the shelf. About 70% of Sam’s Club members are joining online. The app-as-funnel pattern has been building for years; Scan & Go, the in-club mobile-checkout feature Sam’s Club introduced as a standalone app in 2016 and merged into the Sam’s Club app in 2018, is the longest-running expression of it. Pulsifer framed the app-then-club pattern as a reason to abandon conventional e-commerce metrics that treat a visit without a transaction as a failed interaction. The Sam’s Club view, per Pulsifer, is that the physical club and the digital experience reinforce each other rather than competing for credit.

Express Delivery Is The Speed Bet

On April 22, Sam’s Club announced an enhanced tier of its Express delivery offering, promising checkout-to-doorstep delivery on thousands of in-club items in as little as an hour, with no minimum purchase and no markups on in-club pricing. The fleet-wide rollout across more than 600 clubs began April 2. As of the announcement, Sam’s Club reported nearly 65,000 Express deliveries fulfilled since the rollout, with an average order placed, shopped, and delivered in 55 minutes. The new one-hour tier carries a $10 delivery fee for Plus members and $22 for Club members, alongside the existing three-hour tier at $5 for Plus and $17 for Club. Pulsifer told Progressive Grocer that order frequency has increased since the rollout.

Pizza Delivery Started With Rotisserie Chicken

The Member’s Mark 16-inch Hot Baked Pizza became available for delivery in late May 2025 at $8.98, with three flavors (cheese, pepperoni, four-meat), rolled out across all Sam’s Club locations by the end of that month. Pulsifer told Progressive Grocer that the pizza delivery idea originated with rotisserie chicken, which was already a top item in curbside pickup, and that the company moved from concept to live pizza delivery in six weeks. Pulsifer also disclosed two operating details in the interview that Sam’s Club has not publicly broken out before: the company is now delivering more than 22,000 pizzas per week, and it uses AI to predict busy pizza delivery days so it can stay ahead of demand. He framed the program as driving incremental engagement, with members shopping more frequently as a result.

What’s Worth Watching

The interview was conducted before the May 1 start of the Walmart and Sam’s Club quiet period, which is part of why the operating data came out with it. The next official update to several of these figures will come with Walmart’s Q1 FY27 earnings on May 21. Sam’s Club has new leadership behind the framing Pulsifer articulated: Latriece Watkins became President and CEO of Sam’s Club U.S. on February 1, succeeding Chris Nicholas, who moved to President and CEO of Walmart International. Whether the channel-blind operating philosophy Pulsifer described continues to shape how Sam’s Club describes itself under Watkins, and whether the numbers behind the framing hold through the back half of the year, is the next question.

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