Mass US retailers like Amazon and Walmart are hoping to reap huge profits from the use of drones for aerial delivery of their store goods.  But the real future of remote package delivery may well lie elsewhere – in fast food.

While Amazon and Walmart continue to face obstacles to the expansion of their drone operations in a handful of US states, fast food deliveries via drones are zooming ahead in numerous cities across the globe, with a huge new surge expected later this year.

In Australia, KFC has partnered with the Alphabet subsidiary Wing to deliver chicken nuggets and other small fast-food items to consumers in two suburbs, Canberra and Logan.  Wing’s drones have a limited payload of just 1.5 kilograms, but next year the company plans to start delivering larger party-sized packages containing the entire KFC menu, including chicken breasts and soft drinks.

Wing’s smaller and lighter drones are ideal for “quick-service”’ delivery, especially for prepared food.  Books or larger store goods offered by mass retailers can be delivered within 24 hours on a larger drone with a 5-10 pound payload and additional road delivery support.  But KFC consumers want their food piping hot and delivered within a matter of an hour or so.

Wing’s drones use a tether system that allows small food packages to be lowered into a customer’s backyard or driveway as the drone hovers overhead.  But under current Australian regulations, the drones can only fly in a limited radius from a local KFC outlet, barely a mile.  The same restrictions apply to Wing’s deliveries in Logan for Roll’d, a small Vietnamese fast food chain, and for DoorDash and Coles (the latter two include small grocery items).  But Wing hopes the success of its current pilots will allow for expanded Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights at greater distances and in additional suburbs, and eventually to major cities like Brisbane and Sydney.

Wing’s partnership with DoorDash is unique because it’s a third-party service.  Customers making purchases from food and grocery stores choose the DoorDash app’s new “delivery by drone” option, rather than the usual road delivery.  DoorDash then assigns the drone work to Wing, piggy-backing off of Wing’s existing drone infrastructure.

Harrison Shih from DoorDash Labs, the company’s research and development team, told Brisbane Times that its partnership with Wing allowed the company to sidestep a lengthy process of developing its own drone fleet.  For Wing, it means a single pilot can schedule various drone flights at once, coordinating their delivery routes, which lowers costs and increases the drone fleet’s efficiency,

Another immensely popular drone delivery item is pizza.  In fact, one of the first companies to ever successfully deliver food by drone was Domino’s Pizza – back in 2016, at the dawn of the modern drone industry.  The experiment was considered a moderate success but Domino’s dropped the idea until; last year when it renewed its partnership with SkyDrop, the same U.S.-based drone company that first pioneered Domino’s pizza deliveries.

In the years since that historic achievement – the original one is now a museum piece – Skydrop has upgraded its drone design to include a higher payload capacity (up to 3.5 kilograms), a hovering altitude of up to 200 feet and a parachute delivery system for additional safety.  The company’s also seeking Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) certification from the FAA for fully autonomous flight and with additional certifications from civil aviation authorities in New Zealand (where it first delivered pizzas for Domino’s).

Domino’s, for its part, says it’s returning to drone delivery because the drone industry has matured since its first experiment seven years ago –and popular demand is growing.   The company recently experimented with ground-based robot delivery in Houston, TX, but ran into problems – and the returns, by comparison, were modest.

“We invested in this partnership and technology [with Skydrop] because we believe drone delivery will be an essential component of our pizza deliveries in the future. This innovation means customers can experience cutting-edge technology and the convenience of having the freshest, hottest pizza delivered by drone from their local Domino’s store to their door,”

Domino’s is not alone.  Papa John’s has also begun drone pizza deliveries in Powder Springs, a suburb of Atlanta – with a woman-owned UAV firm, Drone Express –  and plans a major expansion in 2023.  The project’s still in a pilot phase; only customers within a one-mile radius of a Papa John outlet can order a pizza by drone.

And the deliveries are still labor-intensive.  A hovering Drone Express UAV lowers a tether into a Papa John’s parking lot to secure the ordered pizza, then flies to the customer’s home where a Papa John’s employee is assigned to lower the package to the ground with a special winch.

There are no package airdrops and drone flights, while pre-programmed, are still closely monitored by Drone Express.

But apparently those restrictions haven’t cooled customer interest in the new service.  Far from it.  “When you fly into that neighborhood, it’s like a concert let out,” Beth Flippo, CEO of Drone Express, told the New York Post recently.  “People run out onto the streets.”

Papa John’s officials say drones are destined to become a major part of fast-food delivery systems nationwide.   Suburban sprawl and increased road traffic congestion have increased demand while slowing the efficiency of traditional road delivery.  For now, Drone Express UAVs will supplement – but not replace —its road and bicycle fleets.  But with additional FAA regulatory approval, the company hopes to offer fully autonomous deliveries, including night flights – across Georgia and eventually nationwide — within the next two years.

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