Sears Launches Grocery-Delivery Service

Sears has been delivering refrigerators and washing machines to U.S. homes for decades. Now the company is looking into delivering groceries too.

The service, an expansion of Sears' year-old MyGofer online shopping portal, quietly launched on Memorial Day in Manhattan and in the Hamptons, said Tom Aiello, spokesman for the Hoffman Estates-based company. The home delivery service — which brings groceries, prescriptions, electronics and other goods from its Kmart stores — is slated to roll out to Chicago and other markets this summer, he said.

Sears Holdings Corp. launched MyGofer last year as a way to combine bricks-and-mortar retailing with Amazon-style online shopping. MyGofer.com allows shoppers to search tens of thousands of goods online, place orders from a computer or iPhone and pick them up at a Kmart store in as little as two hours — without getting out of their cars.

Sears also converted a shuttered Kmart store in Joliet into a warehouse and showroom with a drive-through and renamed it MyGofer. The store, which opened in May 2009, is the only one of its kind.

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