Sam’s Club launches one-hour Express Delivery, no minimum purchase required

Sam’s Club is betting that speed can become a new habit for members, not just a promotional add-on. The retailer launched a one-hour Express Delivery tier on April 22, saying members can get thousands of in-club items from checkout to doorstep in as little as an hour, often faster, with no minimum purchase and the same prices they would see in the club.

The new service sits above Sam’s Club’s existing three-hours-or-less Express option, which now costs less than the one-hour tier. Plus members pay $10 per order for the one-hour service and Club members pay $22. The older Express option remains available at $5 for Plus members and $17 for Club members. Sam’s Club said nearly 65,000 Express deliveries had already been completed since early April, with some orders arriving in under 12 minutes.

For associates and club leaders, the real story is not the pricing. It is the operational bar that comes with promising one-hour fulfillment at scale. Faster delivery requires tighter picking discipline, quicker staging and more coordination between the sales floor, receiving, curbside pickup and last-mile delivery partners. It also raises the stakes on inventory accuracy, because a one-hour promise only works if the right item is in the right place when the system says it is available.

That pressure will land across the club. Front-line teams are likely to face more member questions about substitutions, timing and order accuracy as delivery windows shrink and expectations rise. In practice, the new tier ties the club more closely to the digital side of the business, where speed, inventory visibility and handoff execution matter as much as in-aisle service.

Greg Pulsifer, senior vice president of eCommerce at Sam’s Club, oversees SamsClub.com, the app, curbside pickup, delivery and fulfillment. His team is now carrying a bigger share of the banner’s growth strategy as more than 50% of Sam’s Club U.S. members transact digitally in some form and U.S. eCommerce sales rose 27% in the most recent quarter.

The one-hour launch also fits a broader expansion plan. Sam’s Club said in 2025 that it planned to double membership and more than double sales and profit over the next 8 to 10 years, open 30 new clubs, add about 15 a year after that, and remodel all 600 existing locations. It has also been experimenting with faster delivery for specific items, including Member’s Mark hot baked pizza, which it made available through Express delivery in as little as three hours last year.

With Walmart saying same-day delivery was on track to reach 95% of U.S. households by the end of FY 2026, Sam’s Club’s one-hour tier looks less like a perk and more like a test of how far club labor, inventory systems and delivery networks can be stretched before speed starts demanding a new kind of operating model.