Food delivery platform DoorDash and drone delivery company Wing have announced the launch of a drone delivery pilot in Christiansburg, Virginia, which will allow ‘select local customers’ to order eligible menu items from fast food vendor Wendy’s to be delivered via drone.
Harrison Shih, senior director of DoorDash Labs, said: “We are excited to expand our partnership with Wing in the US to integrate drone delivery into DoorDash’s ecosystem.
“At DoorDash, we are committed to advancing last-mile logistics by building a multimodal delivery platform that serves all sides of our marketplace.
“We’re optimistic about the value drone delivery will bring to our platform as we work to offer more efficient, sustainable, and convenient delivery options for consumers.”
This launch in the US follows DoorDash and Wing’s drone delivery pilot programme in Queensland, Australia, which began in 2022. It has since expanded to three locations in the Australian coastal state, delivering goods from ‘over 60 participating merchants’.
“Expanding our partnership with DoorDash and launching in the US is a direct result of the success we’ve seen from our initial collaboration in Australia, where Wing has served tens of thousands of customers via the DoorDash app for over a year now,” explained Cosimo Leipold, head of partnerships at Wing.
He continued: “Wing has now made over 350,000 deliveries across three countries and looking ahead we are focused on providing a fast, affordable and safe service to our partners so they can better serve their customers.
“This moment continues our meaningful expansion of this service in the US and advances our shared goal to better the last-mile delivery ecosystem.”
To take advantage of the trial, those with an eligible address can select the drone delivery option in the DoorDash app and will receive their order from a Wing drone ‘typically in 30 minutes or less’.
DoorDash hopes that this partnership will provide ‘a quick and sustainable delivery option for small, short distanced orders while creating the potential for incremental order growth across the platform’.
