Sam’s Club Kicks Off Fight Hunger, Spark Change Campaign. Here Are the Details

Sam’s Club has kicked off its Fight Hunger, Spark Change campaign. The annual campaign, which is now in its 12th year, finds the retailer teaming up with its customers to raise awareness of food insecurity nationwide. Let’s look at what we know.

Sam’s Club and Walmart Are Part of the Promotion

According to Drugstore News, Walmart and Sam’s Club are partnering with customers, suppliers, and associates for the 12th year to help Feeding America’s food bank partners through the Fight Hunger, Spark Change initiative.

The annual donation campaign, which runs March 1-31, kicks off a celebration of Walmart, Sam’s Club, and Feeding America’s 20-year partnership, which has grown into one of the most transformative collaborations in the hunger relief space, with approximately $271 million in donations — including over $177 million from the company and the Walmart Foundation and almost $95 million from members and customers, according to the retailer.

“Our extraordinary partnership is grounded in a shared belief that ending hunger in America is possible,” said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, Feeding America’s CEO, in a statement to the outlet. “For two decades, Walmart and Sam’s Club have brought bold, impactful ideas to the table, and executed them consistently and with purpose. We are grateful for all they’ve done and all that’s to come.”

Since 2006, Walmart and Sam’s Club have donated over 9 billion pounds of food to Feeding America’s network of local food banks and partner agencies.

The Fight Hunger, Spark Change campaign will be available online and in shops from March 1 to March 31.

Throughout the campaign, all donations remain local. Sales-activated supplier donations and registration donations are sent to a local Feeding America partner food bank in a store or club’s community. Since its launch in 2014, the initiative has helped to acquire approximately 2 billion meals for people in need.

Sam’s Club has six suppliers: General Mills, Kellanova, Kodiak, Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, and Unilever.

Scan & Go Experience

In October 2024, the retail giant announced that it was unveiling a digital-only club, with no check-out lanes. Customers would also not have to wait for an associate to examine their paper receipts. Instead, AI-powered technology, which is supported by a network of cameras and was released in 2024, handles verification. In late April, the Walmart-owned warehouse club informed Business Insider that more than half of consumers at sites where the technology had been installed used the pay-and-go option, allowing shoppers to exit 23% faster.

Peter Keith, senior research analyst at Piper Sandler, told CNBC that Scan & Go “really eliminates the most painful part of these membership clubs, which is the long lines to check out.”

Technology, notably investments in e-commerce, is a crucial advantage for Sam’s Club versus its primary competitor, Costco, which is twice as productive as Sam’s. Costco only started offering self-checkout stations in the past two years.

The Dallas site will be a testing ground for in-store innovations. Aside from the absence of cashiers, the store has four times more room for preparing clients’ e-commerce orders for curbside pickup or home delivery, as well as a pizza robot capable of producing up to 100 pizzas per hour.

“It’s kind of the physical manifestation of a journey we’re trying to go on as a company,” Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas told CNBC at the time. “The idea is that over time, we will be 100% digital engagement as a business, and you’ve got to prove that things work before you scale them.”

Some merchants, including Walmart, Kroger, and Dollar General, have also experimented with self-checkout-only locations, but others have begun removing self-checkout stations or limiting the quantity of items that may be purchased at self-checkout lanes, allegedly due to significant shrinkage.