Walmart’s drone delivery program is already well underway, with the retailer having completed 10,000 deliveries over the last two years in partnership with DroneUp. Now Walmart is expanding its efforts to offer “drone deliveries at scale,” through a new partnership with Google parent company Alphabet.
Alphabet’s Wing division will now offer on-demand drone delivery from two Walmart stores in the Dallas metro area, allowing the retailer to reach an additional 60,000 homes. Drone delivery enabled by the partnership with DroneUp is already available to close to 4 million households across 36 stores in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
The Walmart Supercenter on Preston Road in Frisco, Texas will be the first to launch the Wing service, joining a network of 11 drone hubs already operating in the Dallas area. Once operations begin, customers can download the Wing app and enter their address to determine if their home is within the Wing drone delivery range. Customers will be able to order items like frozen treats, household essentials, last-minute meal solutions like macaroni and cheese and even fragile items like eggs.
“With drones that can fly beyond visual line of sight, we’re able to unlock on-demand delivery for customers living within an approximate six-mile range of the stores that offer the service,” said Prathibha Rajashekhar, SVP of Innovation and Automation at Walmart U.S. in a blog post. “This is an exciting next step for our customers as it provides even more access to a convenient, innovative and most importantly, super speedy way to get the items they need.”
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