Sears to add grocery-delivery service

Chicago A report late Thursday by the Chicago Tribune said that Sears Holdings Corp. is looking to enter the grocery-delivery market, an expansion of Sears' year-old MyGofer online shopping portal.

Sears spokesman Tom Aiello told the Tribune that the retailer quietly launched on Memorial Day in Manhattan and in the Hamptons. The home-delivery service -- which brings groceries, prescriptions, electronics and other goods from its Kmart stores -- is slated to roll out to Chicago and other markets this summer, he said.

Sears Holdings Corp. launched MyGofer last year as a way to combine brick-and-mortar retailing with Amazon-style online shopping. MyGofer.com allows shoppers to search tens of thousands of goods online, place orders from a computer or iPhone and pick them up at a Kmart store in as little as two hours. Sears also converted a shuttered Kmart store in Joliet, Ill., into a warehouse and showroom with a drive-through and renamed it MyGofer. The store opened in May 2009 and is a one-off concept to date.