How Albert is meeting new grocery shopping needs with Wolt

When Albert launched its online grocery offering, on-demand delivery was still an emerging sales channel. Four years later, changing customer expectations have made it an increasingly important part of the retailer's strategy. 

Looking back, Roman Bartisek, Albert’s Vice President of Digital Technologies, says the company didn't immediately recognize the role local commerce would come to play. He has since seen consumers turn to platforms like Wolt not only for restaurant food, but also for groceries and other retail products.

“This segment is crucial for us because we do not have our own capabilities to serve customers in the quick-commerce space. So the collaboration with Wolt, which is nicely growing dynamically, is essential for us. We’d probably lose the customer to competitor pure players on the market.”

Meeting new shopping needs with on-demand delivery

For Albert, the challenge was not simply keeping pace with a new sales channel. It was finding a way to serve customers in shopping moments the retailer could not easily serve itself. Roman says the partnership has helped Albert “follow the customer in the part of the journey where we wouldn’t be able to serve ourselves without the collaboration.”

And as more shoppers embrace this channel, these moments are becoming ever more important. Wolt's Retail Report 2026 found that 35% of consumers want faster deliveries, while 32% now expect online orders to arrive within two hours.

For Albert, the Czech supermarket brand of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize, that suggests this is only the beginning.

He also sees this as a wider commercial opportunity, with the potential for bigger baskets to drive incremental sales.

"We believe it is incremental business from two perspectives,” he said. “One is that we are capturing our current customer at different shopping missions and potentially also driving the basket beyond what we see in the classical brick-and-mortar.

"Today, Wolt is below 1% of sales, but we see that in our best stores it is up to ten percent and it's growing. So definitely the potential is there.”

Working together to improve the delivery experience

Of course, delivering a great customer experience means more than simply offering fast delivery. Albert and Wolt are also working together on improvements, from better substitutions and customer interface updates to segmentation, targeting, joint campaigns, and loyalty integration.

It is also helping Albert strengthen its operational efficiency. Behind the scenes, the focus remains on the fundamentals of delivery performance, including uptime and order completeness, with Wolt providing insight into performance and identifying where improvements can be made.

"For us as a retailer, one of the key topics is operating excellence, so predominantly our uptime and the high order completeness,” said Roman. “Wolt is helping us to understand those numbers, keep us honest, and also challenging us to be continuously improving day by day.”

Looking ahead, Roman expects speed and spontaneity to play an even bigger role in how people shop, creating more opportunities for retailers to serve customers in the moment.

For other retailers considering where local commerce could fit into their own strategy, his advice is simple: “Take courage, try it out, start small, learn big and scale up based on the capabilities and also based on evolving collaboration with Wolt.”