So Walmart Canada's pick up seemed to develop in front of my eyes. At the start of the pandemic, there were almost no spots and they screwed up a lot. E.g you'd get half the items you ordered, wrong items, would not get pick up order ready in time, fee on orders, etc. Whoever ran the show, executed brilliantly. It kept getting better. A relative scoffed at my high praise, and I convinced him to try it .. he too was blown away. I bring this up because so many Canadian retailers acted stupidly and frankly, many old school businesses keep doing this all the time (looking at you Costco .. Costco seemed to have pretended the pandemic did not happen .. they did not develop a touchless pick up model at all, and their online prices seemed to always be higher than the store price .. cancelled my membership there).

To be brutally honest: What does "touchless" mean here except clever marketing that plays off fears about Covid?

If anything more people touch your items in this system or its on par. Sure there's no cashier/packer touching your items at checkout. But the equivalent has to happen internally. I have no idea how it actually works but I gather since most stuff goes directly into the store and not the warehouse someone walks through the store and picks the order like you would exposing themselves to the Covid risks and then potentially someone else packs it all up and yet another person delivers it to your car as this happens asynchronously and there might even be a shift change in between.

FWIW my Costco didn't pretend the pandemic didn't happen. I still sometimes have to wait to get into the fruit/veggie or dairy coolers, with someone making sure that not too many people are in there at the same time. They applied the limits intelligently (only allowing one person per membership into the warehouse at all at a time when the government limits were very low) so as to allow more people to shop without having to wait outside for ages (which happened in the first 'panic buying stage' of the pandemic). They have less produce in the cooler too to allow more space for passing (even to the detriment of the produce. I just don't buy some stuff any longer as its no longer cooled and there are quality issues). They also rearranged some other stuff to make it easier to access without bumping into each other. None of the other stores I have been to have done this at all.