Amazon’s Big-Box Play: Walmart + Club, but Digital

In late February 2026, the headline finally flipped: Amazon reported $716.9B in 2025 revenue, edging past Walmart’s $713.2B for its most recent fiscal year.

That doesn’t mean Walmart “lost.” Walmart’s online business is still growing fast (its global ecommerce sales are now $150B+ annually, with a recent quarter showing ~24% ecommerce growth).

But for suppliers, the scoreboard matters less than the direction of travel: Amazon is getting better at turning everyday shopping into an always-on loop of search → purchase → delivery/pickup → re-order. And now it’s testing how that loop works when there’s a front door you can walk through.

Where Amazon is gaining on Walmart (and why you should care)

Amazon’s biggest advantage isn’t “online.” It’s friction removal.

When Amazon wins, it’s often because it collapses steps:

• Discovery happens inside the cart (search + recommendations).

• The impulse is immediate (one-click, subscriptions, re-order prompts).

• Fulfillment is the product (speed and reliability become part of the brand promise).

That flywheel is showing up in grocery and household essentials—categories that used to be Walmart’s home turf.

Amazon says it’s now a top-three grocer in the U.S., with $150B+ in grocery gross sales and 150M+ customers shopping groceries each year. And the prize is enormous: in 2024, U.S. “food at home” spending was $1.06T (groceries alone).

So if you sell consumables—food, beverage, household, personal care—this isn’t an abstract rivalry. It’s a fight over the weekly routine.

Amazon’s physical-store reset (and the quiet “tell” inside it)

Here’s the twist: Amazon isn’t expanding the stores you expected.

In January 2026, Amazon announced it would close Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go physical stores, while doubling down on:

• Whole Foods expansion (100+ new stores planned over the next few years)

• Whole Foods “Daily Shop” small-format growth

• Faster grocery delivery, including perishables in same-day delivery and tests like “Amazon Now” (~30-minute delivery)

This is Amazon admitting something important: a grocery store has to be more than a store. The economics are brutal unless it also behaves like a node in a larger network (delivery, pickup, returns, advertising, data).

The “Walmart + Sam’s Club” question: what Amazon’s new big-box could become

Now for the part you asked about: Amazon’s new physical store concept that looks a lot like a Walmart Supercenter-sized box—and potentially feels like a club model over time.

Local officials in Orland Park, Illinois approved plans for a ~230,000 sq. ft. Amazon retail store offering groceries, household essentials, and general merchandise—explicitly described as a retail store open to the public, not a warehouse/DC. Reports indicate it’s expected to open in 2027 and will include pickup/online integration.

And it may not be a one-off: reports say Amazon has explored another similar large-format proposal near Chicago (e.g., Oak Brook).

So how does this turn into “Walmart + Sam’s Club” behavior?

Even if Amazon doesn’t require a membership to enter (early reporting suggests it won’t), it can still layer club mechanics on top of an open-door store:

1. Bulk without the membership gateThink “club packs” and value bundles—just not locked behind a card scan. Prime could still unlock better pricing, faster pickup windows, or exclusive pack sizes.

2. The store as a fulfillment engine (not a shelf business)A supercenter-sized box can hide a lot of operational magic: staging for same-day, pickup lanes, micro-fulfillment, and returns processing. If half the building exists to move online orders faster, Amazon doesn’t need the same sales-per-square-foot logic as traditional big-box.

3. Private label + data-powered substitutionAmazon can lean hard into private brands and dynamic recommendations. If your item is out-of-stock, Amazon’s system doesn’t just lose the sale—it reroutes it.

4. Retail media in the aisleRetail media is becoming the “tax” on growth at the largest retailers. Amazon’s ad business is now reported at $68B+ annually, and it keeps growing.

Walmart is scaling its own ad engine too (Walmart reported $6.4B in global ad revenue recently). A physical Amazon big-box would give Amazon even more moments to monetize attention—endcaps, in-store screens, app prompts tied to where the customer is standing.

That’s the hybrid: a supercenter shell + club pack architecture + a digital layer that never stops selling.

How this could play out over time (a supplier’s view)

2026–2027: Prove the prototypeAmazon tests whether the big-box can do three jobs at once: shopper traffic + pickup/delivery speed + profitable operations. Expect heavy iteration.

2028–2029: If it works, it spreads—selectivelyAmazon won’t blanket the country with stores the way Walmart did. It would likely target “network wins”: metro areas where a store improves delivery density and reduces last-mile costs.

2030 and beyond: The real competition becomes the householdAt that point, the fight isn’t store count. It’s whose ecosystem owns the recurring basket—and whose platform gives suppliers the best path to predictable velocity.

What’s at stake for suppliers (the practical shifts to prepare for)

If Amazon’s big-box/club hybrid becomes real, suppliers will feel it in very specific ways:

1. Pack architecture gets more complicatedYou may need three versions of the same item: ship-to-home friendly, shelf-ready, and bulk/value. (And yes—case packs start mattering again.)

2. Your content becomes your shelf spaceEven in a physical store, Amazon will steer decisions through app UX, search behavior, and recommendations. Product detail pages, images, and titles don’t stay “ecom work”—they become retail work.

3. Speed expectations creep into everythingAmazon is expanding same-day grocery capability and reporting major growth in perishable same-day sales. If your supply chain can’t support consistent in-stock, the algorithm will happily “solve” the problem without you.

4. Retail media becomes a line-item you can’t ignoreIf growth requires spend, margin planning must account for it early—not as an afterthought once velocity slows.

5. Returns and damage flow back to the supplier fasterA big-box that also functions as a returns hub can accelerate reverse logistics. That can be good (faster learnings)… or painful (faster disputes).

6. Pricing pressure shows up in sneaky waysHybrid models love “quiet discounts”: bundles, multi-buys, subscribe-and-save mechanics, and targeted offers that don’t look like classic TPR.

7. Your negotiation counterpart becomes a system, not a buyerWalmart is famous for process. Amazon is famous for mechanism. The “rules” are often embedded in the platform.

A quick (fictional) scenario to make this real

Let’s say you sell a premium pantry item—call it Riverbend Pasta Sauce (fictional example).

• On Walmart shelves, Riverbend fights for facings and a clean price ladder versus national brands.

• On Amazon, Riverbend wins a keyword… until a sponsored competitor outbids them and the buy box shifts.

• Now Amazon opens a big-box nearby. Riverbend gets placed, but the real volume comes from a two-pack bundle that’s only surfaced to Prime shoppers in-app—plus a pickup offer that shows up when customers search for “weeknight dinner.”

Same product. Three paths to the sale. Three different profit equations.

That’s the world suppliers are walking into.

The move to make right now

Don’t treat this as “Amazon vs. Walmart.” Treat it as two different operating systems for retail—and design your commercial strategy so you can win in both.

At Woodridge Retail Group, we typically pressure-test suppliers with a simple question: If your #1 SKU got 20% more demand next month from a new fulfillment-driven format, would that be a win… or a supply-chain fire drill?

If the answer is “fire drill,” this trend is your early warning.