PC Express Review: Loblaws Grocery Pickup and Delivery, Explained

We’ve lost count of how many times PC Express has saved a weeknight. The fridge was empty, the day got away from us, and forty minutes of in-store browsing wasn’t happening. A few taps, a pickup slot, done.

PC Express is Loblaw’s online grocery platform. You shop online and either drive to the store for pickup or have it delivered to your door. It’s not a robot warehouse like Voilà, it’s not a specialty service, and it won’t save you forty percent on your weekly haul like Tre’dish. For the household that already shops Loblaw banners and has a points balance sitting there doing nothing, that’s fine. What it does is turn the grocery run you’re already making into one you don’t have to show up for.

How PC Express Pickup and Delivery Works

You build your cart on the PC Express site or app, pick a timeslot, pay online, and either have it delivered to your door or drive to the store for pickup. A personal shopper walks your store and picks your order from the same shelves you’d be navigating yourself.

For delivery, you choose a timeslot as early as 30 minutes ahead and the order gets dropped off at your door.

For pickup, at most locations it’s curbside: park, give your spot number, stay in your car, and someone brings it out. At others you walk inside to a dedicated pickup area. It depends on the store.

The price you pay is the in-store price at your banner. The markups don’t hide in the items. They show up as separate fees, which is a more honest way to charge for a service.

What matters here is the banner coverage. PC Express covers the following Loblaw banners across Canada: Real Canadian Superstore, No Frills, Fortinos, Maxi, Independent, Valu-mart, Zehrs, Real Atlantic Superstore, Provigo, City Market, Wholesale Club, and Dominion in Newfoundland. If you shop No Frills for the prices, you can still use PC Express and you will still get No Frills prices. You’re not giving up your price tier to get the convenience. What you are getting is the exact same selection from the exact store location you already shop at. There is one exception, which we’ll get into next.

PC Express Delivery Options and Fees, Explained

This is where PC Express gets a little confusing, and it’s worth understanding before your first order rather than after.

Think of it as two questions. Do you need it today or can it wait until tomorrow? And if you need it today, do you need it now or in a few hours?

If tomorrow works, next-day is your default. Without the PC Express Pass (an optional annual subscription we’ll get into shortly), the pick fee is $1.00 for pickup or $5.99 total for delivery. With the Pass, both are free on eligible orders over $30.

If you need it today, same-day runs the same pick fee but delivery jumps to $9.99 total. Priority gets your order ready in as little as two hours at select stores, at $5.00 for pickup or $13.99 for delivery. With the Pass, both drop to $3.00.

The short version: next-day for your regular shop, same-day if today matters, Priority if you need it fast. The sooner you need it, the more you pay. And the more regularly you use any of these tiers, the faster the Pass pays for itself.

Then there’s Rapid Delivery, which is worth understanding separately because it isn’t quite the same service with a faster clock. Rapid runs through a joint venture between Loblaw and DoorDash, fulfilled out of dedicated DoorDash centres rather than your local store. That matters because the inventory and pricing are different. A bag of Lay’s Classic was $4.75 on PC Express and $5.49 on Rapid. The steak comparison returned a completely different product: fresh and cheaper through PC Express, frozen and more expensive through Rapid. It’s a parallel store built for speed, not a faster version of your regular shop. Price the cart before you commit.

For most households, next-day pickup or delivery is the default that makes sense. Pop by on your way back from work or time it so it arrives before nightly cooking. The other tiers are there when you need them.

The PC Express Pass: Is It Worth It?

The Express Pass runs $99.99 a year. On same or next-day orders over $30, pickup and delivery are both free. Priority drops to $3.00 for pickup or delivery, and Rapid Delivery drops to $3.00 as well. You also earn 2% back in PC Optimum points on pickup orders. If you’re doing a weekly pickup shop, the $1.00 service fee alone adds up to $52 a year without it. The Pass pays for itself in under two months before you factor in any delivery savings or points.

There’s also the PC Insiders World Elite Mastercard at $120 a year, which bundles the Pass and bumps the points rate to 4% back at all Loblaw banner stores. If you’re already running most of your grocery spend through a Loblaw banner, the extra $20 over the standalone Pass pays for itself quickly on points alone.

How PC Express Handles Substitutions

PC Express uses in-store shoppers, not a centrally managed warehouse. This means that if something’s out of stock, a human is making a call in real time. Sometimes the substitute is fine and other times you order a specific yoghurt and you get a different brand because it’s the same size. Voilà picks from a centrally managed warehouse. Tre’dish takes orders days ahead. PC Express is working from live store inventory, which means more variability than either.

You can set substitution preferences on most items when ordering, but it’s not airtight. What matters most is what happens when a substitution is made. In our experience, the store calls before the order goes out. You can flag a problem, swap the substitute, or pull the item entirely before it lands at your door. Voilà and Tre’dish don’t give you that window. With PC Express it means the substitutions that do happen rarely come as a surprise.

How to Shop Canadian on PC Express

PC Express has a Shop Canadian filter and a Prepared in Canada badge that appears on individual products across the catalogue. Before you lean on it too heavily, it’s worth knowing what’s been happening with Canadian grocery labelling over the past year.

The Buy Canadian movement that picked up in early 2025 pushed every major chain to flag domestic products more prominently. The CFIA has since issued fines to Loblaw-owned stores specifically for misleading country-of-origin displays and has signalled the grace period for non-compliance is over. Loblaw is still using the badge, which at this point means they’re applying it knowing regulators are watching. The labelling has more teeth behind it now than it did when the movement started.

Prepared in Canada is a regulated label with a specific meaning: the product was processed or prepared in a Canadian facility. That’s it. The ingredients can be domestic, imported, or a mix. The company behind the product doesn’t have to be Canadian. It’s a facility claim, not a supply chain one.

What the filter does well is surface things you’d otherwise scroll past in a catalogue of tens of thousands of items. Suraj ghee, a Canadian brand with a strong following in South Asian households. Farmer’s Market butter croissants at $6.00 for 270g, made locally. Zabiha Halal chicken wieners. Janes chicken strips. These aren’t the deep-traceability discoveries you get from Tre’dish, where the app often connects items to a specific city and province, but they’re real Canadian products sitting in aisles you walk past every week. Turn the filter on for your first shop and see what’s already in your regular store that you’ve been walking past.

Is PC Express Worth It?

If you’re shopping at No Frills or Maxi for the prices and you want to stop spending 45 minutes walking the aisles, PC Express is a legitimate option. You’re not giving up your price tier to use it.

For anyone already in the PC Optimum ecosystem, the case is simple. You’re the customer who is already earning points on groceries, at Shoppers Drug Mart, or through the credit card. PC Express keeps all of that intact and adds 2% back on pickup orders with the Pass. No switching cost. Same shop, same prices, same points, with the store visit optional.

It’s less suited to households primarily chasing the lowest per-item price. Tre’dish will undercut Loblaws pricing on a lot of staples, and if price is the primary driver, PC Express doesn’t change that equation. What it changes is how much of your Tuesday evening you spend in a store.

If you haven’t tried it yet, first-time orders often come with $10 to $30 in incentives added to your PC Optimum account. That’s a free test of the whole thing. One order is enough to know if it’s for you.

Summary