The Best Time To Grocery Shop At Walmart For Freshly Stocked Shelves

Grocery shopping can prove annoying when your go-to store seems to be out of everything. While big box stores like Walmart take steps to avoid this, there's still a chance you may find your favorite items out of stock. With over 11,000 retail locations worldwide, one may think there are enough Walmarts to keep the product plentiful. But depending on the time of day you visit, you may be met with shelves that have already been heavily shopped. If you don't love roaming produce aisles, only to be met with bruised apples and sold-out greens, try to do your Walmart visits early in the morning.

Walmart employees on Reddit delivered some insight on the store's restocking rates, and while it varies by location, shelves seem to be restocked daily, or nightly, with workers replenishing items in the evening or early morning hours. This means that night owls and early birds may get the best pick of products and avoid any shady things about Walmart's grocery department, like low or out-of-stock items or vegetables of questionable quality.

Walmart may have a long history of multiplying, rebranding, and food recalls that affected millions, but the grocery chain is still focused on the path ahead by developing new ways to keep pace with shoppers. To ensure issues like low stock aren't the norm, Walmart has taken an innovative approach by using AI to monitor shopping trends and predict future supply demands based on past data. This technology gives Walmart a more accurate analysis of what products are needed in stores and when. 

Walmart continues to lean into preparing for the future with AI through the "InHome Replenishment" service that was announced in 2024. This customer experience anticipates both the needs of shoppers at home and the rate at which they use groceries like milk, condiments, or bread, and automatically delivers replacements to their door. It essentially puts groceries on autopay — a convenient choice for busy individuals, but not exactly ideal for those of us who enjoy picking our own groceries to make sure we're getting the freshest stock possible.