Send In The Drones
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a drone delivering your dinner! And if you are a Chipotle fan in the Dallas area, you might just be able to get your meal delivered faster than any DoorDasher could ever hope to achieve in DFW traffic.
A Dallas-area Chipotle is testing a new drone delivery service with Zipline, a third-party autonomous delivery service that has more than 1.6 million commercial deliveries under its belt, and has flown 100 million miles. In other words, this is not your buddy’s new DJI drone. Your dinner could be delivered for a mere $2.99 delivery fee plus 15% service charge, capped at $6. Heck of a deal there.
They even have a cute name for the partnership: Zipotle.
Chipotle joins several other chains seeking to put food in the hands—and mouths—of customers as quickly as possible, without ever having to leave home. As I mentioned recently, my daughter and son-in-law had Chick-fil-A delivered to their Frisco backyard by drone. It’s a thing.
Drone delivery, something predicted by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos way back in December 2013, is finding its wings in a big way. Given the messy traffic found throughout DFW and other big urban areas, it is no surprise that people want the benefits of dining out, but without the stress of actually having to venture out.
DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, and others did a great job filling that want. According to Statista, revenue from the Online Food Delivery market is expected to hit $431 billion this year. But those companies have to be nervous with the arrival of drones, because they could easily cut into their revenues.
There are limits, though, because drones typically can’t handle more than 10 pounds. This means that drinks are likely on you.
Furthermore, there are size limits too. Delivering a large pizza may be just a little too much, and never mind the packaging and special care required to ensure that the pizza doesn’t slip out of its box and land on someone along the way.
Then there are concerns over keeping hot food hot, and cold food cold. While DoorDashers can use special insulated bags, it becomes more of a challenge with drones because size and weight are such critical factors.
Lastly, some types of foods, particularly my favorites, which happen to be Thai and Indian, are just not suited at all for drone delivery. I can see my Green Curry or Aloo Gobi being a complete mess by the time it is dropped into my yard.
But for things like burritos and chicken sandos, drones are a godsend. Drones are not bound by the street grids and congestion. They can fly at 300 feet over it all, and in a straight line.
I remember when I first started blogging about the potential of drones nearly a dozen years ago. Many of my students howled and hissed at the thought, with some joking about bringing out their rifles and taking potshots. I hope they were kidding.
The early-1960s animated series The Jetsons presented what people thought the space age would look like. Even they did not predict drones. Instead, they had manned delivery pods that were basically flying cars. OK, they were similar to a point, but it was just an airborne DoorDasher. We still don’t have the flying cars, though.
What a great time to be alive, guys! Dick Tracy may have predicted smart watches and cell phones, but it took a lot more forward thinking to get where we are today. What we see now is the commercial application of military UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) that have been deployed for more than a century. It’s just a different payload.
Once again, we find ourselves on the cusp of another revolution in consumer behavior. Online ordering was one thing. In-app purchasing like through DoorDash was another. But to purchase now through the Zipline app and just wait for the familiar whirring sound of an overhead drone, and watching it slowly lower your meal with pinpoint accuracy to GPS coordinates many digits beyond the decimal point?
Priceless. If only I lived in the Dallas area, because I would be checking this out for lunch.
Dr “Black Beans, Rice, and Lots of Veggies, Please” Gerlich
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