Wendy’s will airdrop a Baconator on your doorstep

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In brief: DoorDash and Alphabet subsidiary Wing have launched their first joint drone delivery program in the US. Select customers in Christiansburg, Virginia, can now order eligible menu items from Wendy’s through DoorDash and choose to have it delivered via drone. If eligible, they’ll see the option for drone delivery during checkout.
Orders will be packaged and delivered using a Wing drone, which can travel at up to 65 mph. Once at its destination, the drone lowers your order down using a tether.
Most orders arrive within half an hour or less on average, without putting additional vehicles on the road.
Wing launched a similar pilot program with DoorDash in Australia in 2022. According to Cosimo Leipold, head of partnerships at Wing, the company has already served tens of thousands of customers via the DoorDash app Down Under.
This isn’t Wing’s first time flying in Christiansburg. Back in 2019, the company launched a consumer-facing drone delivery service in the city that’d drop packages off at customers’ doorsteps. Walgreens and local retailer Sugar Magnolia participated in that pilot, as did FedEx.
Beyond its DoorDash partnership, Wing now has over 350,000 delivers under its belt across three countries.
DoorDash said that with the partnership, it aims to provide access to an innovative and sustainable delivery option for small, short distanced orders that complements traditional Dasher-fulfilled orders.
Drone delivery has been a mainstream concept for over a decade now, dating back to at least 2013 when then Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos teased Prime Air. Regulatory hurdles kept efforts sidelined for years yet even with those largely sorted, rollouts have been somewhat slow. In the present day, the whole thing still feels more like a novelty than a viable alternative to traditional delivery methods.
Have you had the opportunity to experience a drone delivery? If so, what was the experience like? Is it the future of package delivery or just a flashy gimmick?
DoorDash and Wing will look to expand to other US cities later this year, we’re told.