It is a time-honored tradition for suppliers of product — be it fresh produce, consumer goods, apparel or pretty much anything else sold at retail — to make the trip to Bentonville, AR, to talk to a merchant representing Walmart.

The company’s main headquarters building, which was first constructed more than 50 years ago in this northwest Arkansas town, features dozens of meeting rooms in the corridors surrounding the inner office space. Each one of those rooms is booked throughout the day for suppliers to make their pitches and new product introductions. With dozens of rooms and many hours of each day to work with, it is not hard to imagine there are literally tens of thousands of meetings each year.

While I have nothing to sell, I was given an opportunity to visit Bentonville and take a little peak at the giant retailer to write this Retailer of the Year story for The Produce News.

My journey began at the San Francisco International Airport, which puts me about as far away from Bentonville as any domestic ag producer. Maybe a Northwest apple shipper or a Hawaiian papaya grower would be farther, but that’s about it. Coming from a major airport (SFO) only required one stop (Denver) before another flight into the Northwest Arkansas Airport (XNA), which is only a dozen miles southwest of the headquarters town of about 60,000 people. I can imagine the trip from some of the agricultural regions in the western U.S. would be much more of an ordeal. An 8:40 Monday morning departure from SFO had me in the hotel restaurant in Bentonville by 7 p.m. that evening. It had snowed all day, so it was bone-chilling cold for this California native in early January.

Bentonville and its next-door neighbor Rogers, AR, (where the first Walmart was built in 1962) have dozens of hotels to choose from, including almost every major chain. There appears to be a couple of high-end hotels, but most are the typical chains with what I assume are Midwest nightly rates (far cheaper than San Francisco for sure.) My trip called for a two-night stay to accommodate a day at Walmart and two travel days.

I wouldn’t call Walmart a company town, but there is no mistaking that Sam Walton put this city on the map. When I told produce colleagues I was going to Arkansas, everyone correctly assumed Bentonville and told me of their individual experiences. There are Walmart stores in every direction, including a handful of Neighborhood Markets, Walmart Pharmacies, Walmart Bakeries, a Walmart Supercenter, a traditional Walmart store and a Walmart To Go. The Walmart Museum is downtown and the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion is a bit south of Bentonville city limits in Rogers.

The current home office is a cramped complex spread out over several blocks with a handful of office buildings, parking garages and surface lots. Walmart has warehouses and other building in the near vicinity. The company has seemingly outgrown its headquarters space and that is the case.

A new campus is currently under construction on 350 acres about two miles east of the current office on 14th Street on property that already housed several Walmart divisions and facilities. By all accounts, the new headquarters will be a site to behold and will no doubt attract many produce sellers to make their first or another trip to Bentonville when it is expected to be fully opened by the end of 2025.

Walmart has released a rendering of its new home office, which appears to be representative of its lofty position in the marketplace.

Spread out over 350 acres, the new Walmart headquarters will include 12 office buildings alongside amenity spaces such as a Marriot brand hotel, auditorium, fitness center, childcare center, amphitheater, food hall and two lakes. The child care facility alone will have 73,000 square feet of space to support more than 500 children. About 15,000 Walmart associates are expected to work at the campus.

The nine parking decks will contain more than 1,000 spaces each and will be equipped with bike and electric vehicle parking, as well as future flexibility for autonomous vehicles, according to a recent news story.  The new campus is being designed with biking in mind as it will feature storage, showers and changing rooms in each neighborhood of the complex.

While the plan is to open the entire campus in the next two years, Walmart has noted that like all major construction projects, timing can change. A visit to the location reveals that construction is well under way.

In fact, the week I was in town the Walton Family Whole Health & Fitness Center opened its doors, marking the first facility to open on the campus. The 360,000-square- foot fitness facility includes tennis courts, pickleball courts, three pools, basketball courts and indoor tracks, according to press reports.

The new campus appears to have been designed to facilitate and enhance those ever-present sales trips to Bentonville. On the company’s website, Alice Walton, the daughter of Sam Walton, talks about the new campus and specifically talked about its meeting rooms for both associates and customers.

“When ready to connect and collaborate, associates can reserve one of the neighborhood, tiered or multi-purpose meeting spaces available throughout the office buildings, and make use of innovation studios, full-service tech bars and coffee collabs,” she writes. “Surrounding our office spaces, you’ll find outdoor patios at the lobby level, rooftop terraces, foodtruck pavilions and more gathering grounds, including Helen’s Amphitheatre, a large central gathering ground in the very heart of campus. Our new campus will be a place for associates from across the globe to connect and create, no matter what their day has in store.”

Open Call

Though most major produce suppliers in the United States are probably doing business with Walmart and will have the chance to visit the new campus, there are, of course, many small produce companies that might think doing business with Walmart is a hill too high to climb. But Walmart has an interesting Open Call event each year that gives any American company at least the potential to make that Bentonville trip.

Walmart holds a two-day Open Call event, usually in the fall, for “selected American entrepreneurs to meet face-to-face with Walmart and/or Sam’s Club merchants and potentially get their product in the hands of millions of our customers,” according to a posting on Walmart’s website.

The event is especially designed to give smaller suppliers a chance at the big break for which they have been looking for with Walmart. In fact, when a supplier’s pitch is accepted, the Walmart representative presents them with a Golden Ticket reminiscent of the main story line in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which coincidentally (or maybe not) aired the same year Walmart opened its first home office in 1971.

The product pitches are 30-minute, one-one-one meetings to secure deals ranging from a handful of local stores to supplying hundreds of stores under the Walmart banner. Anyone picked to make a pitch has had to go through a vetting process to make sure they are wasting neither their time nor that of a Walmart merchant. In addition to the hundreds of pitch meetings, the program includes a series of breakout sessions designed to inform, empower and encourage these American business owners. Many of the sessions are open to the general public via live streaming, giving thousands of potential suppliers a glimpse at the Walmart experience. There is plenty of information on the Open Call application on the Walmart website.

In fact, produce industry suppliers have participated in the program and been successful. A Walmart spokesperson revealed that in the past Pure Palm Produce, with its pitted Medjool Dates, and The Ugly Fruit Co., with upcycled dried fruit, did make pitches and each received a golden ticket.

Visiting Bentonville

As mentioned, the Northwest Arkansas Airport is nearby and is a very easy airport to traverse. Though it services many more destinations than one would expect (no doubt fueled by Walmart visitors), it is a small airport with the car rental lot adjacent to the exit door. That feature is always oner of my favorite amenities an airport can offer. There is a hotel very close to the airport but not much else over the next 10 miles as you head to Bentonville and the many hotels near Walton Blvd. It is Walton Boulevard that will take me to Walmart headquarters the next day. In fact, I was up and down that road for two days visiting a Supercenter, a Neighborhood Market and a Walmart To Go.

To a first-time visitor, Bentonville is impressive. It has a picturesque downtown filled with a number of brewpubs, specialty shops, restaurants and a vibrant business district. There is a central downtown square, park and monument, as well as the Walmart Museum (currently being renovated) and a world-class art museum — the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art — which was founded by philanthropist and arts patron Alice Walton. Crystal Bridges is a public non-profit charitable organization that opened in 2011, and offers free admission to all. Since its opening, it has doubled its art collection and has welcomed 5 million visitors. The building and grounds are amazing and include forest trails, sculpture gardens and waterside pavilions. Bentonville also has the acclaimed Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman-Wilson House and the popular Scott Family Amazeum.

The Walton Family have made many other investments in the community, including hundreds of miles of biking trails. In fact, Bentonville bills itself as the “Mountain Biking Capital of the World” evident by the Bike Rack Brewing establishment near downtown… and worth a visit.