Cities generate over 80% of global GDP. Yet, those same dense streets now groan under increasing numbers of delivery vans, which could add five minutes to the average urban commute and account for 13% of city carbon emissions by 2030.
Shoppers aren’t ignoring the strain. More than half have chosen store or curbside pickup in the past year, opting for flexibility over doorstep drop-off. And that number continues to rise steadily.
Ahead, you’ll learn why click and collect wins on convenience and cost for retailers as well as customers. You’ll also discover ways to launch it in your ecommerce store and capitalize on this online shopping trend.
What is click and collect?
Click and collect has evolved from a pandemic workaround into a mainstream fulfillment option for retailers. It’s easy to see why shoppers and retailers love it. Also called curbside pickup or buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), the model lets shoppers buy online and pick up their order at a physical store, locker, or drive-up bay.
Click and collect benefits both the shopper and the retailer:
- Shoppers pick up their order without the hassle of scheduling deliveries.
- Retailers eliminate the last mile from fulfillment and offer shoppers Amazon-style speed without incurring additional shipping costs.
Click and collect has become a $109 billion channel used by more than half of US consumers, as per eMarketer. The grocery industry is the most popular sector, primarily because it deals with perishable goods. But it’s also popular among apparel, electronics, and home goods shoppers who prefer the convenience and flexibility of picking up orders on their own schedule. For costly items, avoiding the rising trend of doorstep delivery theft is an additional incentive.
Peak season behavior shows click and collect is here to stay. During the 2024 holiday rush, curbside pickup accounted for 17.5% of all online orders, and rose to over 37% on December 23 as last-minute shoppers rushed to grab gifts in time to wrap them.
Why shoppers (and retailers) love click and collect
Speed and convenience ROI
More than two-thirds of US shoppers now prefer click and collect over home delivery. They view it as the fastest and most hassle-free way to complete a purchase. This convenience clearly drives revenue—eMarketer reports that 44% of click-and-collect shoppers buy at least one additional item while picking up their order.
Reduced last-mile cost and theft risk
The last mile accounts for 53% of total shipping costs, but every order a shopper picks up is one less you have to ship. Shifting volume to store pickup protects margins and cushions against carriers’ surcharges.
Click and collect also solves another growing issue—porch piracy. Roughly 58 million packages worth $12 billion were stolen in the US in 2024. By keeping orders inside the store until the customer arrives, you completely eliminate this risk, reassuring customers their purchase is safe.
Click and collect vs. local delivery
Pickup still edges out local delivery, but the race is tightening. Data from Brick Meets Click and Mercatus for November 2024 shows pickup (curbside or in-store) claimed 41.3% of US online grocery dollars—about $3.9 billion—up 8.8% year over year.
Delivery is catching up fast, driven by low-fee memberships like Walmart+ and Instacart+ that make doorstep service feel free.
While the two services have similar adoption rates, they offer distinct advantages:
- Pickup avoids the last-mile tax entirely, letting merchants fulfill orders from store inventory and hand them off curbside. There are no fuel surcharges or driver payouts.
- Local delivery wins when speed beats cost. Picture a parent juggling back-to-back Zoom meetings with a sick toddler at home. Paying an $8 delivery fee for a two-hour grocery drop-off is cheaper than losing billable time, wrangling a car seat, and standing in line.
💡The takeaway: Offer both pickup and local delivery, but keep pickup front and center for profitability and in-store traffic. Treat delivery as a promotional option that keeps high-value customers in your ecosystem.
Operational checklist for implementing click and collect in Shopify
Configure pickup in-store in your admin
To configure click and collect in Shopify, you’ll need at least one active location that fulfils online orders. Once you have this:
- Open Settings > Shipping and delivery
- Find Pickup in store
- Select the location where shoppers can pick up their orders
- Set a processing time for in-store pickup
- Customize the “ready for pickup” notification
- Preview the checkout
- Click Save
📚Want the full step-by-step setup? Follow Shopify’s pickup in-store guide for location activation, store transfers, and custom-app swaps (for Plus stores).
Inventory visibility and stock buffers
Getting pickup right begins with a single, real-time view of stock across every channel. Shopify’s unified commerce stack draws inventory, supplier POs, and sales into one system, ensuring the inventory shoppers see online matches what’s available across all sales channels.
From there, a few strategies keep that promise intact:
- Enable multi-location inventory. Each pickup store displays its own on-hand units to prevent oversells.
- Use Store transfers for out-of-stock items. Choose backup locations that can automatically send units to the pickup store and set a longer lead time (e.g., “Ready in 2–4 days”) when a transfer is required.
- Exclude bulky or restricted collections via Transfer exclusions so Shopify never promises pickup on items that can’t be moved.
- Hold a safety buffer, typically 5% to 10%, on fast-moving SKUs to protect pending pickup orders.
- Review the “Days of inventory remaining” report weekly and create manual transfers ahead of known peaks.
Order-routing and notification flows
Automation keeps you and your team out of the weeds. Shopify Flow is a native tool for all Shopify retailers that helps you automate tasks and processes within your store and across your apps. You can create custom workflows to streamline click-and-collect operations.
For example, use Shopify Flow to:
- Automate order- tagging or notifications when an order is marked for click and collect.
- Trigger alerts to staff when a click-and-collect order is ready for pickup.
- Manage inventory adjustments automatically when click-and-collect orders are fulfilled.
- Send automated customer notifications about order status and pickup instructions.
To set this up, create workflows in Shopify Flow using triggers, conditions, and actions tailored to your click-and-collect process. For help deciding on the right workflows and to see how easy it is to set up, check out Shopify Flow examples and templates.
Parking bay and signage best practices
Don’t forget about your parking lot. It’s the first physical touchpoint with your brand, so make sure customers can easily see how to pick up their orders, and don’t have to waste time driving around the lot or parking too far away.
Simple way-finding and smart prompts that reduce dwell times include:
- Reserve angled, numbered bays near the service door so one double-sided sign covers two cars and staff take fewer steps.
- Use high-contrast signage with a single instruction (“Text ‘Bay 3’ to 555-1234”) to eliminate guesswork.
- Enable geofenced arrival alerts. Integrate a location services platform so staff get a real-time countdown showing precisely when the customer reaches Bay 3. No calls, no texts—just stage, walk out, and hand off.
Measuring success: KPIs that matter
Shopify provides detailed analytics for every order, but dashboards only help if you know what success looks like. Track these two metrics to confirm whether click and collect is running smoothly.
Average pickup time
Customers rate their satisfaction based on how long they wait for an order. A 2024 study from Waitwhile found that 80% of customers avoid businesses when they see a line.
Define the average pickup KPI as the time between when a customer arrives and when they receive their order. Targets should be:
- Delight zone: Under 2 minutes
- Acceptable: Under 4 minutes
Capture the customer’s arrival event (via button tap or geofence) and the “order picked up” fulfillment event. Log the data in a custom report to identify how many orders were completed outside your acceptable zone.
Attach rate / cross-sell uplift
Click and collect can boost revenue through upsells—if a customer is picking up a gift for a loved one, for example, you might suggest a treat for themselves or a gift wrapping service. Aim for a 15% to 20% lift in order value.
To improve your attach rate, try these tactics:
- Locate some eye-catching, low-priced impulse buys (under $10) within arm’s reach of the pickup desk.
- Add a one-line upsell to your “Ready for pickup” SMS. For example, “Need gift wrap? Just ask when you arrive.”
- Run a pickup-only discount code and track its redemption to demonstrate incremental sales.
Industry examples and case studies
Grocery
Grocers around the world are leveraging click and collect to protect margins and keep fuel surcharges off the P&L:
- Kroger’s 3,000-store pickup network: In Q4 2024, the chain logged 11% digital sales growth, with pickup and delivery combining for double-digit gains. The service is now available across all the company's regional chains.
- Worldwide momentum: Sales from click-and-collect fulfillment and home delivery contribute almost equally to the online food retail market in Sweden.
- Regional proof: Texas-based United Supermarkets saw a 250% increase in online sales year over year after rolling out curbside lanes at its stores and doubling store staff to support order pickups.
Specialty retail
Click and collect also turns retail stores into fulfillment centers:
- Honey Hair: The haircare brand initially launched a popup pickup station in a local coffee shop, then automated in-store pickup with Shopify POS. Pickup soon accounted for 25% of online sales and contributed to 245% YoY growth in POS sales, helping the founders open two more stores.
- Lola’s Cupcakes: The British bakery has a network of retail stores and collection points to facilitate click-and-collect orders.
- Our Place: The cookware brand’s flagship store in Venice, California, offers in-store pickup during store hours.
Future trends in click and collect
Smart lockers go mainstream
Locker networks are all the rage right now. InPost plans to add 1,000 new locker sites by the end of 2025, on top of the 12,000 it already operates across Europe. Global carriers like DHL and Geopost report similar expansions, competing for prime locker locations in busy retail areas and grocery store parking lots.
Lockers also fit into the ever-growing sustainability trend. In Sendcloud’s 2024 survey, 45% of online shoppers call lockers “the greener choice,” and 53% think retailers should offer them to reduce CO2.
Sustainability pressure tightening
Cities and shoppers alike are paying attention to logistics emissions. The World Economic Forum warns that urban delivery emissions could climb 60% by 2030 if nothing changes. This will increasingly impact air quality and public health, potentially reducing life expectancy and increasing health costs.
Lockers and in-store pick up can help. Studies in Norway show up to a 30% CO2 reduction when parcels are routed through lockers. Another Norwegian study found that 60% of customers walked or cycled when picking up orders at lockers or stores, while only 26% used a car.
Automated pickup kiosks to shorten the wait
Kmart Australia pioneered the robotic kiosk in 2023 and created global buzz. Shoppers place their order online, head to the store, key in their order code, and a robot pulls the tote and drops it onto the tray.
Aussies have quickly become “obsessed” with the new technology—even posting about it on TikTok.
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Click and collect FAQ
What's the point of click and collect?
Click and collect removes the costly, time-consuming last mile from fulfillment, giving shoppers quicker access to their purchases. They skip delivery fees and the risk of stolen packages. Retailers protect their margins and capture impulse purchases when customers arrive at the store.
How does click and collect work?
At checkout, customers select “Pick up in store” (or a locker/curbside option), choose the physical location, and place their order. They receive a confirmation email, text, or notification through the store’s mobile app. Once the store marks the order “Ready for pickup,” the customer heads over, shows a pickup code or ID, and collects their item.
Is click and collect reliable?
Yes. Major retailers and thousands of small to mid-size merchants run it daily. Reliability comes from real-time inventory sync and automated “ready” alerts. When those are in place, pickup orders are fulfilled on time and with lower damage or loss rates than shipped parcels.
What are the disadvantages of click and collect?
Not all items may be eligible for pickup, forcing customers to place separate orders if some items must be delivered instead. Additionally, pickup is limited to store hours, and customers must travel to the store, which isn't always convenient.
