Walmart Puts Dunkin on the App to Sell More Groceries

Walmart will let customers order Dunkin drinks and food in its app, starting at 150 shops inside its stores. It then plans to reach most of Dunkin’s 10,000 U.S. restaurants that sit outside those buildings. The menu will live in a Restaurants tab, on the same phone people already use for milk and paper towels.

On Sept. 3, 2026, the retailer said it would expand restaurant delivery with Dunkin through Inspire Brands, Dunkin’s parent. The coffee is not a side quest. It is how Walmart wants more households to learn Express Delivery.

Dunkin Joins the Restaurants Tab

Eligible shoppers will see Dunkin automatically, based on the delivery address on the account. They can open the menu, change drinks and food, and pay in the same checkout they use for a regular Walmart order. The company said orders will run through Walmart Restaurant Delivery, the service that first went live with Subway.

Greg Cathey, Walmart’s senior vice president of eCommerce fulfillment transformation, put the pitch in household terms. He said customers would order “their beverages, donut or sandwich alongside their paper towels, milk and household essentials.” Scott Murphy, Dunkin brand president and Inspire chief brand officer, said the chain wants guests to get Dunkin “whenever and wherever they want it.”

Walmart called itself “a rapidly emerging contender in the restaurant delivery business” in that same release, and pointed to a store map that puts it within 10 miles of approximately 90% of the U.S. population. About 280 million customers and members visit its more than 10,900 stores and sites each week. Fiscal 2026 revenue was $713 billion.

HOW A DUNKIN ORDER HITS THE WALMART APP

• The tab: A Restaurants section on the Walmart app and Walmart.com lists Dunkin when the address qualifies.
• The menu: Shoppers open drinks and food, then customize before the items sit in the same cart as store goods.
• The fee: In-store restaurant prices are supposed to match the board, with a flat Express fee and no extra delivery add-ons in the Subway test.
• The drop: The first wave is fulfilled from the 150 Dunkin counters already inside Walmart, then from shops beyond those walls.

Inspire also owns Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s, and Sonic, and says it has 650,000 company and franchise workers plus more than 2,500 franchisees across 55 markets. Dunkin, founded in 1950, is the largest coffee and donuts brand in the United States, with more than 14,200 restaurants in nearly 40 markets. The U.S. delivery deal is the part that now sits on Walmart’s phone.

65% of Those Orders Came With Groceries

Subway was the first restaurant integration within Express Delivery, announced June 4, 2026. Meals could ride alone or with a store order, in as little as 30 minutes or less, from shops in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, with a plan to reach about 1,400 in-store Subway counters by the end of summer. Subway has been inside Walmart since 2004 and remains the retailer’s largest restaurant tenant.

Tracy Poulliot, executive vice president of eCommerce and marketing for Walmart U.S., said customers make around 21 meal decisions each week. Damien Harmon, president of Subway North America, called the app hookup “a natural evolution of our 20-year relationship.” Menu prices were set to match the in-restaurant board, and some items were exclusive to the Walmart shops.

The figure that matters for Dunkin showed up after that test had been running. In a late-August note, Cathey wrote that nearly 65% of restaurant orders went out with Walmart items the customer needed quickly. He described sandwiches for dinner with groceries for the next morning, or lunch with a few household goods.

SUBWAY’S FIRST MONTHS ON EXPRESS

Cathey said restaurant delivery was introducing more people to Express, and that what happens after the first mixed order interested him most. A sandwich was not only lunch. It was a reason to try a 30-minute grocery lane and, for nearly 30% of those first-timers, a reason to come back inside a month.

Why Coffee Beats a Sandwich as a Hook?

A breakfast drink is a daily habit in a way a footlong is not, which is why Dunkin is a sharper test of that Express funnel than Subway was. People already treat Dunkin as a weekday stop. If that stop moves into the Walmart app, the retailer gets a morning reason to open a delivery screen that grocery lists open only a few times a week.

The same habit is also the risk. Coffee demand piles up before 9 a.m., when a household is less likely to want detergent, bananas, and a dozen eggs in the same bag. A lunch sub pairs more cleanly with “groceries for tomorrow.” If Dunkin tickets run as drink-only drops at dawn, the nearly 65% attach rate from the Subway test can shrink.

That is why the in-store first wave is a cleaner experiment than the later map. Inside a Supercenter, the iced coffee and the milk already share a building, a parking lot, and a driver who is leaving that site anyway. Cathey’s paper-towels line is easy to keep when the donut counter is 40 paces from the dairy case. It is harder when the Dunkin is a mile down the road and the grocery order is still being picked in the back.

Walmart has not published a split of restaurant-only tickets versus mixed tickets by time of day. Until it does, the honest read is that Dunkin can train Express if the cup rides with the basket, and that a 7 a.m. coffee run can just as easily become a cheap, one-item trip that teaches shoppers nothing about grocery delivery.

Oakwood Opened the 150th In-Store Shop

The delivery deal sits on a store relationship that was already growing. On June 18, 2026, Walmart and Dunkin marked the 150th Dunkin inside a Walmart, at the Oakwood, Georgia, store at 3875 Mundy Mill Road. Everyday Coffee, a franchise group led by Christopher Mellgren, runs that shop.

Kieran Shanahan, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Walmart U.S., said customers come to Walmart “to get more done in one trip,” and that Dunkin saves them an extra stop for coffee, a bite between errands, or a treat during the weekly shop. Murphy called the 150-store mark proof of a tie built on convenience and value. Both companies said they were still looking at more in-store sites.

Shoppers who want the physical list can look up participating Dunkin restaurants on Dunkin’s own locator. The delivery tab will be narrower at first: only the 150 counters inside Walmart, then “the majority” of the 10,000 U.S. shops outside those walls. Walmart did not name a date for that second map.

FROM SUBWAY TEST TO DUNKIN DEAL

1. June 4, 2026: Walmart adds Subway to Express Delivery in six states and aims at about 1,400 in-store sandwich shops by the end of summer.
2. June 18, 2026: The 150th Dunkin inside a Walmart opens in Oakwood, Georgia, under franchisee Everyday Coffee.
3. Late August 2026: Cathey writes that nearly 65% of restaurant orders rode with Walmart goods and that the company is sending restaurant delivery past in-store tenants.
4. Sept. 3, 2026: Walmart and Inspire announce Dunkin on the Restaurants tab, starting at those 150 in-store shops.

Subway still has the bigger in-store footprint. Dunkin has the bigger off-site map. The order of the rollout follows the easier logistics first: pick a drink where Walmart already picks the rest of the basket, then ask drivers to add a second stop.

The Bundle Is How Express Earns Its Fee

Walmart’s Subway copy promised a flat Express fee and “no hidden delivery costs,” with sandwich prices matching the restaurant board. That is the in-store bargain. A mixed cart can justify a fast drop because the retailer is moving groceries, not only a drink. Cathey’s own examples were dinner plus tomorrow’s food, or lunch plus household goods.

A coffee ticket by itself is a small check. The same ticket sitting on top of milk, eggs, and paper towels is an Express order Walmart already wanted to sell. That is the second job Dunkin is being hired to do. It gives the 30-minute lane a morning SKU, then uses that SKU to keep the rest of the store in the bag.

The future of retail is about meeting customers wherever they are and simplifying their lives. By expanding restaurant delivery beyond our stores, we are offering a value and convenience proposition that is unmatched.

Greg Cathey, senior vice president, eCommerce fulfillment transformation, Walmart, Sept. 3, 2026 release

Once the order leaves Walmart’s own building, that math changes. A driver who must pick a latte at a roadside Dunkin, then swing to a Supercenter for the rest of the cart, is running two stops on a clock that was sold as 30 minutes. Menu markups, which Walmart said it would skip for in-store restaurants, are also easier for an independent Dunkin to add when the cup is leaving its own shop. Walmart has not said whether off-site Dunkin prices will stay on the in-store board.

Cathey has argued the map still works because most quick-service brands sit within 5 miles of a Walmart. Proximity is not the same as a shared back room. The 150-shop phase keeps the attach. The 10,000-shop phase bets that the last-mile network can stand in for DoorDash even when the grocery bag is not in the same hands.

DoorDash Already Delivers This Menu

Dunkin is not new to delivery phones. DoorDash and Uber Eats already take its orders. Walmart is inserting a third button, on an app people open for toothpaste, and pricing the in-store version like the counter instead of like a marked-up marketplace. Selection is the gap. Two chains do not make a food app.

DoorDash remains the scale Walmart is walking toward. Its fiscal 2025 filing shows 3.2 billion orders in 2025, up 23% from 2024, and $102.0 billion in marketplace gross order value, up 27%. Revenue was $13.7 billion, up 28%. In December 2025 the marketplaces had more than 56 million monthly active users and more than 35 million DashPass, Wolt+, and Deliveroo Plus members.

DOORDASH’S 2025 BASELINE

• Total orders: 3.2 billion completed across DoorDash’s marketplaces and commerce platform, a 23% rise from 2.583 billion in 2024.
• Marketplace GOV: $102.0 billion, including taxes, tips, and consumer fees tied to memberships.
• Memberships: More than 35 million people on DashPass, Wolt+, and Deliveroo Plus at year end.
• Reach: Marketplaces in more than 40 countries, with the United States still the core of revenue.

Walmart does not need that catalog to make the Dunkin test pay, if the point is grocery frequency. It needs the cup to keep showing up with the basket. If shoppers treat the Restaurants tab as a cheaper DoorDash for coffee only, Walmart inherits the same thin-ticket problem the delivery apps already have, without their restaurant count.

Who Makes the Drink at a Standalone Dunkin?

The first 150 orders will be packed by Dunkin crews who already work inside Walmart, then handed to the same last-mile network that already leaves those stores. Franchisees such as Mellgren’s Everyday Coffee are the named operators on that side of the map. The harder labor sits with the thousands of Dunkin shops that are not tenants, whose morning rush is built around a drive-thru, not a Walmart courier with a second stop on the tablet.

Subway’s franchise papers for the in-store test, described in the chain’s disclosure, had operators paid weekly for app tickets, with no extra fee to join and ordinary card-processing costs. Walmart has not published a Dunkin version of that deal. It has not said who owns a cold drink if the driver is late, or how a franchisee is paid when the order originated in Bentonville’s app rather than Dunkin’s.

By combining the strength of Walmart’s delivery platform with the appeal of our Dunkin’ menu, we can reach more guests in more moments, creating an experience that fits naturally into everyday life.

Scott Murphy, Dunkin brand president and Inspire chief brand officer, Sept. 3, 2026

WHAT WE KNOW

• First wave: Delivery starts at the 150 Dunkin counters inside Walmart, then is supposed to cover most of the 10,000 U.S. shops outside those stores.
• App path: The Restaurants tab shows Dunkin by delivery address, with customize-and-checkout on Walmart’s existing pay flow.
• Prior proof: After Subway launched in June, nearly 65% of restaurant orders included Walmart goods, and one in five mixed tickets was a first Express order this year.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Off-site pickup: No public playbook for how a driver collects an order at a Dunkin that is not inside a Walmart, or how that cup shares a route with groceries.
• Timing: Walmart has not given a calendar for the jump from 150 shops to the majority of 10,000.
• Price and pay: Off-site menu markups, franchisee fees, and whether restaurant-only coffee keeps the Subway-style board price are not in the release.

The 150 in-store counters can still sell Cathey’s combined drop, because the drink and the milk leave the same building. The majority of those 10,000 roadside shops will decide whether Walmart is training grocery delivery, or just running a second coffee app with a blue bag.