--- title: Curbside Pickup — definition | RGM® Glossary url: https://realgrowthmatters.com/glossary/curbside-pickup/ updated: 2026-06-10 source_html: https://realgrowthmatters.com/glossary/curbside-pickup/ --- # Curbside Pickup curb·side pick·upnoun Order online, park, pop the trunk — the fulfillment option that turned the parking lot into the last three feet of e-commerce. Term : Curbside Pickup Is : Online orders delivered to the car Versus : BOPIS (customer walks in) Mainstreamed : The 2020 pandemic retail shift ## Forms & parts of speech curbside pickup · noun Car-side order handoff. "**Curbside pickup** lived or died on one number - minutes from 'I'm here' to trunk closed." ## Definition in plain terms Curbside pickup is the fulfillment option where a customer orders online, drives to the store, and staff bring the order out to the vehicle — no aisles, no checkout, often no leaving the driver's seat. It is the sibling of BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), differing in the last fifty feet: BOPIS customers walk to a counter; curbside customers wait while the counter comes to them. A niche convenience before 2020, the pandemic made it core retail infrastructure almost overnight, and the behavior largely stuck. ## The mechanics The customer-facing simplicity rides on operational choreography. The order flows to the store, staff pick and stage it, the customer signals arrival (an 'I'm here' tap in the app, a text, numbered parking bays with license-plate or geofence detection in the polished versions), and a runner delivers to the trunk — with identity verified lightly and wait time as the metric that decides everything. The economics explain retail's enthusiasm: curbside captures e-commerce demand without last-mile delivery costs (the customer drives the last mile free), keeps inventory in stores rather than dedicated fulfillment centers, and — like all pickup options — drives measurable incremental purchases when customers add items at collection or step inside after all. For marketing, curbside is a conversion and loyalty lever: free-pickup beats paid-shipping at checkout for a meaningful shopper segment, pickup-today answers urgency that delivery cannot, and the arrival moment is an owned touchpoint (a well-timed 'add to your order?' prompt converts remarkably well). The failure modes are operational and they compound publicly — orders not ready at the promised time, customers idling in unmarked bays wondering whom to call, staffing that treats runs as an interruption rather than a role. A curbside promise broken twice is a customer who quietly reverts to a marketplace with delivery. ## When it matters Curbside pickup matters for retailers with store footprints competing against pure e-commerce — it converts the store network from liability to advantage, offering speed delivery cannot match at costs delivery cannot beat. It matters most in grocery, big-box, and pharmacy, where basket sizes and urgency fit the model, and for any retailer whose checkout loses urgency-driven shoppers to faster options. The discipline is operational honesty: promise windows the store actually hits, instrument the arrival-to-handoff time as a north-star metric, design the parking and signage as part of the brand experience, and merchandise the wait — the trunk handoff is a retail moment someone owns or wastes. **Worked example.** A regional pet-supply chain offers curbside in name - a phone number taped to the door, orders ready 'within four hours,' customers calling a busy store line from the lot. Mystery-shopping its own experience embarrasses the team into a rebuild. Orders promise a 90-minute window the stores actually hit; arrival becomes one tap in the app, routed to a dedicated runner role per shift; three numbered bays get signage matching the app; and average arrival-to-trunk time - now on every store manager's dashboard - falls from eleven minutes to under three. Marketing then leans on the operation: 'ready in 90 minutes, brought to your car' becomes the checkout's anti-abandonment pitch against marketplace shipping, and the arrival screen offers one smart add-on (the dog's usual treats) that 14% of customers accept. Curbside share of online orders doubles, and the chain's stores - once a cost problem versus pure e-commerce - become the reason it wins the urgent half of demand. **Failure modes to watch.** Promise windows the operation cannot hit, broken publicly in the parking lot; arrival flows that depend on phone calls to a busy store; no dedicated runner role, so handoffs queue behind register duty; treating the trunk moment as logistics instead of an owned touchpoint; and marketing curbside before the operation deserves it. ## Synonyms & antonyms ### Synonyms curbside pickupcurbside collectioncar-side pickup ### Antonyms home deliveryin-store shopping ## Origin & history Curbside pickup existed at drive-up pharmacies and a handful of retailers for years, but the 2020 pandemic made it standard practice — contactless fulfillment turned parking lots into fulfillment infrastructure within weeks, and the convenience proved durable: customers kept choosing the trunk handoff long after the necessity passed. Etymology: [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curbside_pickup). ## Usage trends Search interest for this term over the last five years: [View interest-over-time on Google Trends →](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=curbside%20pickup&date=today%205-y) ## Common questions What is curbside pickup? : A fulfillment option where customers order online and staff bring the order to their vehicle outside the store — BOPIS without leaving the car. How is curbside different from BOPIS? : BOPIS customers walk into the store to a pickup counter; curbside customers signal arrival and wait while staff deliver to the vehicle — same inventory model, different last fifty feet. What makes curbside pickup work? : Operational choreography — honest promise windows, one-tap arrival signaling, dedicated runners, marked bays, and arrival-to-handoff time treated as the north-star metric. ## Related tools & calculators - tool[AOV calculator](/tools/aov-calculator/) - tool[ROAS calculator](/tools/roas-calculator/) ## Resources & people to follow - reference[Wikipedia — Curbside pickup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curbside_pickup) - referenceRetail fulfillment research on pickup economics and incremental purchase behavior - referenceRGM analysis — instrument arrival-to-trunk time; the parking lot is the last three feet of e-commerce Curated, non-competitor resources verified per term. ## Related training - module[Performance marketing](/training/performance-marketing-foundations/) ## Disciplines Areas of marketing where curbside pickup is a core concern: [Performance marketing](/training/performance-marketing-foundations/)[Growth strategy](/training/growth-marketing-foundations/) ## Read next ## Related terms [BOPIS](/glossary/buy-online-pick-up-in-store-bopis/)[Brick and mortar](/glossary/brick-and-mortar/)[Checkout abandonment](/glossary/checkout-abandonment/)[Basket size](/glossary/basket-size/)[Black Friday](/glossary/black-friday/) ## Sources 1. trends[Google Trends — "curbside pickup"](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=curbside%20pickup&date=today%205-y)