AWS for Industries

AWS is How: Petco Brings Greater Convenience and Personalization to Pet Parents

The American Pet Products Association reports that over 13 million people in the US have welcomed a new pet into their homes over the past year. And having a furry friend nearby has really made a difference: three out of four pet parents say that having a pet in their homes helped reduce the stress of living with the COVID-19 pandemic. Pets have played an important role in our lives over the last year, and even with social distancing and other safety measures, we want to keep our pantries stocked with the treats they deserve.

Petco Health and Wellness Company, Inc. helps pets lead full, rewarding lives by revolutionizing the way the industry thinks about pet wellbeing. The company’s more than 1,500 locations across the US, Puerto Rico, and Mexico include a growing network of in-store veterinary hospitals, and its adoption events have helped find homes for more than 6.5 million animals. Committed to helping pet parents care for their pets, Petco provides a huge selection of high-quality products and services for maintaining pets’ whole health.

Petco curbside pickupPetco offers pet parents many ways to conveniently and quickly receive all their pet essentials, including same-day delivery and repeat delivery. One service that’s especially popular right now is contactless curbside pickup. With Petco curbside pickup, you can place your order through the Petco app or at Petco.com, and when your order is ready, Petco will send you an email with a number to call for pickup. Then, when you arrive at your neighborhood Petco location, call the number, and a Petco associate will bring your order right to your vehicle. For customers who prefer to shop completely from home, Petco offers same-day delivery, which is free on orders of $35 or more. You simply place an order through the app or website before 2 p.m. local time, and an associate at your local Petco will assemble and package your items to be delivered right to your door, the same day.

You can also use the app and website to personalize your Petco experience by setting up repeat deliveries, booking vet, grooming, and training appointments, and requesting care reminders. Plus, you can use the Petco Right Food Finder to get customized food recommendations based on your pet’s unique needs such as weight management, pet size, and age.

Developing Innovative App and Web Features with AWS

Petco AppTo provide pet parents with convenience and personalization, Petco works with JBS Solutions, an AWS Partner, to build innovative microservices using AWS. These microservices, like the Right Food Finder, bring new features to the Petco app and website, and Petco continuously invents better ways to help pet parents quickly get the products and services they need. Quality and speed matter to Petco. With AWS, the company gets cloud services that quickly and easily scale to support the growing number of pet parents using Petco’s app and website. Using AWS also allows Petco’s developers to focus on creating new customer tools and experiences rather than managing processes and infrastructure.

Working with JBS, Petco uses a variety of AWS services to power innovation, including: AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service that lets Petco run code for virtually any type of application or backend service with zero administration, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), a fully managed message queuing service that eliminates the complexity of managing and operating message-oriented middleware, and Amazon API Gateway, which allows Petco to quickly update its app with new features, such as curbside pickup.

Take a look at Petco curbside delivery in the new “AWS is How” campaign. Learn more about how AWS helps retailers engage with consumers and create more personalized experiences.

To read about how JBS Solutions helped Petco develop a personalized ecommerce experience across its mobile platforms, check out the JBS case study.

Tom Litchford

Tom Litchford

Tom Litchford is Head of Worldwide Retail and Wholesale Distribution at AWS. He leads AWS‘s industry strategy and guides the leadership team for marketing and sales enablement, channel development, and the solution offerings required to address customers’ business needs. Named a Top Retail Influencer by Rethink Retail, Litchford has 40 years of experience in systems engineering, sales, product management and marketing of technology business solutions for the retail and hospitality industries, and has held leadership positions at NCR Corporation and Microsoft. Prior to joining AWS in 2017, Litchford served as VP of Retail Technologies at the National Retail Federation, where he oversaw the organization’s cybersecurity program, the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) programs and its technology communities, including the invite-only CIO Council, Women in Retail IT, IT Security Council and the Tech Council.