Walmart Wants to Be Something for Everyone in a Divided America

I’ve never really thought much about Walmart, other than the fact that I’ve never stepped foot inside one of its stores. Jaewon Kang and Devin Leonard’s story for Bloomberg Businessweek paints an interesting picture of Walmart and its CEO, Doug McMillon, who has led the company over the past decade through political and economic shifts, upgraded its stores and attracted higher-income customers, and transformed it into a leading ecommerce business (watch out, Amazon). Its new headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, is a sprawling 350-acre Silicon Valley-esque campus—a symbol of a new modern era for the retail giant. Walmart is thriving, but can it continue growing as it faces new challenges, including Trump-imposed tariffs and an unpredictable consumer landscape?

But McMillon’s most audacious sales job might be his campaign to lure talent to Bentonville. For decades, its top executives ran the company out of an old warehouse, emphasizing that such no-frills digs demonstrated their commitment to keeping costs low. In January, however, McMillon presided over the opening of a 350-acre Walmart campus that looks like an offshoot of the Googleplex. The new spread is still unfinished, and, as of January, many of the senior executives, including McMillon, had yet to move in. But once it’s completed, Walmart’s new home will include 12 renewably powered office buildings with windows scrubbed by drones, a fitness center complete with meditation rooms and pickleball courts, and a bougie suburb’s worth of walkable shops and restaurants, featuring a brewery, a bike store, a tapas bar, a sushi place and a coffee shop serving up items like salted honey oat milk flat whites.