Dive Brief:
- DoorDash and Flytrex have launched drone delivery in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, offering the service from dozens of local and national restaurants including Papa Johns and The Brass Tap, the companies said in an emailed press release.
- The partnership follows a pilot phase earlier this year during which Flytrex completed over 1,000 orders, a Flytrex spokesperson said in an email.
- This is Flytrex’s first partnership with a third-party delivery app. Previously, Flytrex offered deliveries directly from its own app in areas where it operates.
Dive Insight:
The addition of drone delivery isn’t a first for DoorDash. It has been working with Wing to offer delivery services from a shopping center in Charlotte, North Carolina, and from a Wendy’s in Virginia.
However, the partnership with Flytrex will vastly expand DoorDash’s drone reach, with the service initially covering over 30,000 households and over 100,000 residents. Drone delivery is currently available to customers in parts of Little Elm and Frisco, Texas between 8 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. While Flytrex also operates in North Carolina, the plan is to expand around the Dallas-Forth Worth area this year, a spokesperson said.
Flytrex drones have a payload capacity of 6.6 pounds with future models aiming to increase that to 8.8 pounds. The drone company has also implemented advanced drone traffic control technology that allows for multiple operators to serve within the same area while maintaining safe flight paths, per the press release. This is an important element in expanding suburban coverage.
“The next phase of drone delivery is all about convenience, driven by expanded capabilities that unlock a broader range of use cases,” Harrison Shih, head of product for DoorDash Labs, said in a statement. “Larger payloads and longer operating hours allow us to serve more customers, more efficiently, than ever before. By expanding the operational envelope of autonomous delivery, we’re moving closer to making drone delivery a scalable, reliable option for everyday local commerce."
DoorDash has been expanding into robotics and automation through various partnerships with tech companies. Earlier this year, DoorDash joined forces with Coco to offer autonomous robot deliveries in Chicago and Los Angeles.
Uber Eats and Grubhub have long used autonomous delivery bots in select markets, while Grubhub typically uses them in campus and university settings. Neither have done extensive drone delivery. Uber Eats tested it in 2019, but nothing ever came from that test.
