After testing drone deliveries for the last few years, Walmart is increasingly rolling out the option as a way to fulfill e-commerce orders.
As of early January, the retailer had 31 hubs for drone delivery across six states, Prathibha Rajashekhar, the retailer’s senior vice president of automation and innovation, stores and supply chain, recently told retail blog Omni Talk, noting that in the Dallas area alone, the retailer had 11 hubs with drone technology firm DroneUp and two with another tech provider in the space, Wing.
On a single Sunday earlier this winter, Walmart saw 130 drone deliveries at one of its hubs, according to an executive for the retailer — and the company has completed more than 20,000 drone deliveries over the last two years.
“People talk about drones like they are the future. They are here today,” Rajashekhar told Omni Talk.
In January, Walmart announced it is expanding drone delivery powered by Wing and Zipline to up to 1.8 million additional households, linking the option to stores across more than 30 towns and municipalities in the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex. Walmart noted that both on-demand drone delivery providers are approved by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly without a dedicated observer overseeing their drones at all times.
This clearance from the FAA, known as Beyond Visual Line of Sight, has become more frequent in the past year, according to The Wall Street Journal, noting that industry experts say regulatory restraints will decrease as communities become more familiar with the technology and delivery method.
The FAA is currently developing rules to make drone delivery “routine, scalable and economically viable,” a spokesperson for the federal agency told the newspaper.
At the end of February, city council members for North Richland Hills and Plano, Texas, approved changes that pave the way for drone delivery from nearby Walmart stores, according to Dronelife.com.
“The way we think about any solution, whether it’s drone or any other solution is ‘How is it solving a customer problem?’ Customers told us that they want some deliveries to happen within less than 30 minutes, so drones solve that,” Rajashekhar said.
Drone deliveries can get items to customers in 30 minutes and sometimes as fast as 10 minutes, according to Walmart. Three-quarters of the 120,000 items in a Walmart supercenter are eligible for drone delivery, Rajashekhar said.
Walmart has said that it’s seen customers use drone deliveries for forgotten ingredients, snacks, beverages, over-the-counter medicines and cravings, like caffeine or sweet treats, noting that drones can even deliver fragile items like eggs. Drones are particularly handy for parents who are running late or traveling and need to order a microwaveable dinner for their children, Rajashekhar said.
Food is a key ingredient for drone delivery demand. When Wing unveiled in January a new aircraft in its drone fleet, the company noted that the new option would better handle larger orders for items like dinner ingredients such as pasta, marinara sauce, parmesan cheese, canned olives and garlic. Wing’s new aircraft can carry a payload of up to 5 pounds — nearly double the roughly 2.5-pound payload its existing ones handle.
Wing noted that in its first four months of service with Walmart, which started last August, it saw an “overwhelmingly positive” customer response with people using the service for quick meals, groceries, household essentials and over-the-counter medicines.
As more drone delivery hubs go live, customers in the eligible delivery radius will see drone delivery as an e-commerce fulfillment option, Rajashekhar said. Walmart is working to integrate drone delivery options into the retailer’s app so customers don’t have to place drone delivery orders from the drone partners’ websites, she added.
Walmart’s emphasis on drones comes at a time when competitor Amazon has ramped up its own drone deliveries. Amazon announced last fall that it will integrate Prime Air drones into its fulfillment network for faster delivery by deploying them at some same-day delivery sites.
