*By Amanda Weston*
Grocery chain Kroger launched a new delivery service Wednesday to compete with industry giants Amazon and Walmart.
[Kroger Ship](https://ship.kroger.com/) offers more than 50,000 products to online shoppers in Cincinnati, Houston, Louisville, and Nashville. The chain aims to lure new customers with curated options, free shipping for orders over $35, and discounts.
Online shopping accounts for about 2 percent of the American food-and-beverage market, but it's rapidly expanding.
"When you look at all these new channels in the industry, they are growing extremely, extremely fast," Yael Cosset, Kroger's chief digital officer, said Thursday in an interview with Cheddar.
This isn't Kroger's first attempt at online delivery. The grocery chain has offered delivery service from almost half its 2,800 stories through Instacart.
The new service represents the chain's ambition to make shopping easier for its customers ー and help keep its brick and mortar businesses stable.
"The direct interaction with some of the fresh assortment ー produce, meat, seafood, cheese ー experiential engagement is still very important to them," he said. "They do, however, still want the convenience and simplicity that a digital engagement can offer."
Kroger is going up against Amazon, a formidable competitor, [which sold](https://www.wsj.com/articles/kroger-to-launch-grocery-delivery-service-1533117720) about $650 million worth of food items in the second quarter, up 40 percent from 2017.
As for Kroger Ship's future, Cosset said digital partnerships will also play a major role in growth.
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/kroger-introduces-kroger-ship-delivery-service).
The Senate has passed an $8.3 billion measure to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak in hopes of reassuring a fearful public and accelerating the government's response.
Scrambling to keep the coronavirus at bay, officials have ordered a cruise ship to hold off the California coast to await testing of those aboard, after a passenger on an earlier voyage died and at least one other became infected.
Stocks are falling in midday trading on Wall Street, erasing 2 percent from major indexes, a day after they surged 4 percent as the mood swings back to fear about economic fallout from the virus outbreak.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, March 5, 2020.
Emmy winning actor and soon to be "Fairy Godmother" Billy Porter has taken Hollywood by storm. When he is not slaying red carpets or starring in the FX series Pose, he is taking time to practice more self-care.
The San Francisco-based investment fund leader says companies should look to diversify their supply chains to reduce the impact of future outbreaks.
Stocks are rising sharply in morning trading on Wall Street, led by health care stocks after Joe Biden scored a number of Super Tuesday wins. Investors see him as a more business-friendly alternative to Bernie Sanders.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, March 4, 2020.
A love of all things cannabis prompted cannabis journalists David Bienenstock and Abdullah Saeed to create “Great Moments in Weed History” — a podcast dedicated to telling stories, cracking jokes, and, yes, smoking weed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 785 points and bond prices surged after an emergency interest-rate cut by the Federal Reserve failed to reassure markets racked by worries that a fast-spreading virus outbreak could lead to a recession.
