DoorDash and Wing Join Hands for Drone Deliveries From One Wendy’s Location

Those displeased with the sometimes spotty outcomes of manual food delivery are in luck now that DoorDash is partnering with Wing to provide drone deliveries to customers in select regions.

Of course, like every piece of news involving customer-facing drone delivery, the affected area remains tiny in the grand scheme of things. It's a natural outcome of the industry's position at the moment, which is still working out the kinks and taking baby steps before setting millions - or billions - of autonomous aircraft whizzing through the US airspace system with cheeseburgers in tow. Right now, those near Christiansburg, Virginia are the lucky drone delivery customers of the day. They can order anything they want on DoorDash... as long as it's from Wendy's. But once ordered, it will be delivered right to their front door via one of Wing's UAVs. 

Okay, more specifically, it can't just be ordered from any Wendy's either, it has to be the one on 2355 North Franklin Street. And they'll have to be within a relatively limited delivery circle, because those Wing drones aren't really set up for long XC flights yet. But just imagine how cool and cyberpunk it will feel to hear the loud, bucket-of-hornets noise of a hovering UAV while it winches down a greasy little doggie bag. It will feel so futuristic to open the bag and find a lukewarm dollar menu Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger (now carrying a much more cyberpunk-appropriate price tag of $3.29) or a nine-dollar Pretzel Baconator! Welcome to the future, residents of Christiansburg, if nothing else it's better than having someone drop off your fries 80% fewer than you expected them to be.

Everyone at DoorDash and Wing knows that this is just a pilot program, a small scale test to start figuring out the big lessons as both work their way to scaling this jig up from coast to coast.

"We are excited to expand our partnership with Wing in the U.S. to integrate drone delivery into DoorDash's ecosystem," said Harrison Shih, Senior Director of DoorDash Labs. "At DoorDash, we are committed to advancing last-mile logistics by building a multi-modal 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."

"Expanding our partnership with DoorDash and launching in the U.S. 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," said Cosimo Leipold, Head of Partnerships, at Wing. "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 U.S. and advances our shared goal to better the last-mile delivery ecosystem."

FMI: www.wendys.com