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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

drone delivery

Dragontail Systems Partners with Valqari to Deploy Dropboxes for Drone Delivery

Restaurant tech company Dragontail Systems announced last Friday that it has partnered with Chicago-based drone logistics company Valqari to use that company’s automated drone delivery stations.

Valqari’s makes the Drone Delivery Station, which is kind of like an automat for drone-delivered food drop-offs. The Station has a series of locked cubbies, on top of which a drone carrying the food either lands or lowers a tethered package. Once dropped off, the Station’s elevator system lowers the food and places it into a secured cubby. A delivery driver (or even a customer) then receives a notification that the food has arrived and they can unlock the designated cubby to carry the order over the last mile to its final destination.

Smart Drone Delivery Mailbox by Valqari

This news comes a little more than a month after Tel Aviv-based Dragontail, which uses AI to track restaurant order management and fulfillment, announced that it had partnered with Pizza Hut in Israel to do drone delivery of pizzas. Dragontail did not specify where Valqari’s systems would be implemented. (UPDATE: Dragontail said that it will be deployed in the U.S.)

Dragontail’s plan is to do a hub-and-spoke model of drone delivery, meaning that instead of flying directly to people’s houses, the drones will fly from a restaurant to a designated drop-off area. This simplified, narrow approach will help minimize regulatory issues that come with flying drones. Because there will be limited flight paths to and from two fixed points, instead of drones flying deep into residential areas, there isn’t as much government approval needed.

Partnering with Valqari also gives Dragontail the means to safely drop off deliveries without needing a human driver to get near the drone. The locker can also keep food secured should a driver be late for food pickup.

While regulatory issues around drone delivery are being clarified (at least here in the U.S.), and a number of players like Flytrex and Deuce Drone are starting to make deliveries domestically, there is still a long way to go before it can become mainstream.

In the meantime, however, it’s easy to see how a halo of logistical services around drones like that of Valqari’s will rise up to make it easier for drone delivery to come to market.

Dragontail Systems and Pizza Hut Deploy Pizza Delivery Drones in Israel

Restaurant tech company Dragontail Systems announced today that it has joined up with Pizza Hut for pizza delivery by drone in Israel.

To make this type of airborne delivery happen, Dragontail is integrating drones into its Algo Dispatching System, which uses AI to manage food preparation and delivery workflow. The delivery drones won’t be dropping pizzas off at people’s front doors, however. Rather, they will fly pizzas to remote designated landing zones where delivery drivers will pick them up for last mile of the delivery.

This remote drop-off hub approach is gaining traction with delivery companies around the world. IFood is using this model in Brazil, and here in the U.S., Uber is taking this approach with its drone delivery program.

There are actually good reasons to use this multi-step approach when delivering by drone. First, it simplifies the regulatory issues around flying commercial delivery drones because it reduces the number of flight paths that need to be created and cleared with appropriate government entities. Second, even if there is a last mile that needs to be driven, a drone still zooms overhead bypassing a lot of ground traffic on its way to customers for a speedy delivery. Finally, a remote hubg can keep delivery drivers closer to the delivery neighborhoods, rather than having them go back and forth to a restaurant.

Regardless of approach, the drone food delivery space is heating up. Walmart is using Flytrex for a groceries-by-drone delivery pilot in North Carolina. Rouses Market is testing deliveries in Alabama. In Ireland, Manna is making deliveries in around Dublin. And Google’s Wing has been making drone deliveries in Australia.

Drone delivery could become a much more viable option for restaurants and other food retailers here in the U.S., as the Federal Aviation Administration released its final safety and nighttime flying rules for commercial drone operators at the end of last year.

New FAA Rules Bring Burritos by Drone One Step Closer

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced its final rules around the safety of drone flying yesterday (hat tip to GeekWire). The new rules outline requirements around Remote Identification (ID) of drones, as well as spell out rules for flying drones over people and at night. The FAA’s new rules will help bring regulatory clarity to the developing drone delivery industry.

The Remote ID rule is pretty much what it sounds like, requiring drone manufacturers to include technology that “provides identification of drones in flight as well as the location of their control stations.” The rule is meant to identify specific manufacturers should something go wrong with a drone during its flight. This information will be made available to security and law enforcement agencies. Drones without Remote ID functionality will only be allowed to fly in certain areas designated by the FAA.

The second rule released yesterday was the Operations Over People and at Night rule, which covers pretty much what you’d expect. For flights over people and moving vehicles, it outlines the different categories of aircraft and the required safety precautions. Here’s an example from the FAA’s Executive Summary of the new rules:

Category 2 eligible small unmanned aircraft must not cause injury to a human being that is equivalent to or greater than the severity of injury caused by a transfer of 11 foot-pounds of kinetic energy upon impact from a rigid object, does not contain any exposed rotating parts that could lacerate human skin upon impact with a human being, and does not contain any safety defects.

Unsettlingly, the phrase “lacerate human skin” is actually used quite a bit throughout the rules summary.

In its press release, the FAA didn’t specifically mention food delivery instead issuing the following statement:

“The new rules make way for the further integration of drones into our airspace by addressing safety and security concerns,” said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson. “They get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations such as the delivery of packages.”

The FAA’s new rules will certainly help the nascent food delivery sector as it starts to grow. We’ve already seen drone food delivery pop up in small use cases around the U.S. throughout 2020. Walmart partnered with Flytrex for a pilot in North Carolina. Flytrex has also been doing drone delivery tests in North Dakota and North Carolina. And Rouses Market partnered with Deuce Drone to make grocery deliveries in Mobile, Alabama. And there are more on the horizon with big companies like Amazon and Google having their own drones delivery initiatives as well.

But getting past the onesie/twosie patchwork of pilot programs requires clarity of regulations from the FAA so delivery companies and drone startups know exactly how to proceed on a national level. There’s still a ways to go before we’re getting our burritos flown directly to our doorstep, but the new FAA rules will help drones take off.

Walmart’s Drone Delivery Pilot with Flytrex Takes off in North Carolina

Walmart announced today that it has partnered with Flytrex to start a drone delivery pilot program in Fayetville, North Carolina. The drones will deliver select groceries and household essential items.

Neither company provided more details about specific service areas or hours, but we do know that Flytrex has already been operating drone deliveries in Iceland since 2018 and more recently in North Dakota here in the U.S.

As we’ve written before about Flytrex:

The Flytrex drone is a hex-copter capable of carrying a 6.5 pound payload (enough to feed a family of four, said Bash), up to 40 m.p.h., with a range of six miles. The system is really built for suburban sprawl, and uses a tether to lower deliveries down to people when it arrives at its destination. Bash said that while a human driver can typically only make two to three deliveries an hour, a Flytrex drone operator can make up to 15.

Fytrex’s other pitch is that is has numerous safety-related redundancies that allow its drones to withstand catastrophic events like motor loss, battery loss and communication failure.

Walmart’s announcement comes just weeks after its retail rival, Amazon, won approval from the FAA for its own drone delivery program. Elsewhere in the U.S., Google Wing has been making drone deliveries in Virginia, Deuce Drone will start making grocery deliveries in Mobile, AL, and Uber had plans to do drone delivery in San Diego this summer.

But given the complexities of drone delivery (flight paths, added layers of safety in the event of a drone failure, etc.), we aren’t anywhere close to hearing a steady drone of drones overhead anytime soon. Walmart even conceded as much in its announcement today, writing, “We know that it will be some time before we see millions of packages delivered via drone. That still feels like a bit of science fiction, but we’re at a point where we’re learning more and more about the technology that is available and how we can use it to make our customers’ lives easier.”

It’s only a bit like science fiction now though.

iFood and Speedbird Aero Bringing Drone Food Delivery to Brazil

Latin American food delivery service iFood announced today it has received full regulatory approval from Brazil’s National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) to operate two drone food delivery routes in the city of Campinas.

IFood is working with drone company Speedbird Aero, and according to the announcement materials, this is the first time drone-assisted food deliveries have been okayed in Latin America.

The drone deliveries are set to start this October, but the food won’t be going directly to customers’ front door. IFood will use a hybrid approach that includes both drones and last-mile ground transportation. For the first route, drones will fly from a food court in Igautemi Campinas, a large shopping complex, to an iFood Hub roughly 400 meters away. It will take the drones two minutes to fly and drop off the food at the hub, which will then be picked up by drivers for final delivery.

This combination of drone + ground transport is the same approach that Uber is taking with its drone delivery here in the U.S. The advantage of flying drones between two set points is that it is just one flight path, so you don’t have to jump through as many regulatory hoops to ensure drones don’t fly over things like schools or first responder facilities.

It’s been a busy year for drone delivery as this type of service moves from theoretical to more realistic. Manna started making food deliveries by drone in Dublin, Ireland. Flytrex has been doing similar work in Iceland and making its first moves into the U.S. And drone delivery of groceries is coming to Rouses Market in Mobile, Alabama.

To be sure, we are still a ways off before we see (and hear) drones buzzing overhead bringing us our daily lattes. But with the COVID-19 pandemic still surging and re-surging in the U.S. and elsewhere, off-premesis restaurant eating is only going to get more popular as dining rooms are shunned or forced to close down.

A combination of technology advancements and societal conditions means that the sky could soon be the limit for food delivery by drone.

Flytrex Trialing Delivery by Drone in North Dakota and North Carolina

Restaurant meal delivery by drone always seems to be just over the horizon, as it were. While there are a number of tests from different companies going on around the world, delivery by drone just doesn’t quite feel like a real thing yet.

You wouldn’t get that from speaking with Yariv Bash, Co-Founder and CEO of Flytrex, a Tel Aviv-based drone startup. Bash is very optimistic about the future of drone delivery, obviously, and says his company will be powering drone deliveries for thousands of customers by early next year.

Flytrex has already done thousands of drone deliveries in Reykjavik, Iceland since 2018. Here in the U.S., at the King’s Walk golf course in North Dakota, it offers drone service now as well (“No more waiting around for the beverage cart.”), according to Flytrex’s website. The company is also currently prepping another pilot in North Carolina.

The Flytrex drone is a hex-copter capable of carrying a 6.5 pound payload (enough to feed a family of four, said Bash), up to 40 m.p.h., with a range of six miles. The system is really built for suburban sprawl, and uses a tether to lower deliveries down to people when it arrives at its destination. Bash said that while a human driver can typically only make two to three deliveries an hour, a Flytrex drone operator can make up to 15.

“But the interesting part is on the inside,” said Bash about his drones. “There are multiple levels of redundancy. It can sustain motor loss, battery loss, communication failure. If everything fails, there is an independent parachute.”

Safety measures like those are top of mind in any conversation about drone delivery. It’s one thing if a rover robotstops dead on the sidewalk, quite another if a drone stops working above your house (or head).

And while the COVID pandemic may be accelerating the adoption of other contactless forms of delivery (like robots), Bash said that all stakeholders are taking the safety of drones very seriously. “The FAA is not willing to lower the bar on safety,” Bash said “but it is willing to work a lot harder with you.”

While safety is a priority, Bash also said that other regulators are excited about drone delivery. “On the local governmental levels, so far, everyone is really happy and wants us to start operating in their areas,” he said.

Flytrex is just one of many companies in various states of drone delivery around the world. There’s Manna in Ireland, Zomato in India, and Fling in Thailand. Domestically, Google Wing has been making deliveries in Virginia, Deuce Drone will be making grocery deliveries in Mobile, AL, Uber is supposed to be testing drone delivery this summer in San Diego.

Bash told me that his company will expand service by partnering in new markets with smaller, existing aviation companies that currently run their own manned flight companies. Those companies are already used to complex nature of flight and the regulatory issues surrounding them.

Though he didn’t spell out many details, Flytrex will also be partnering with unnamed companies to build out a marketplace of restaurants that will offer a drone delivery option. Those restaurants will charge an unspecified delivery fee that will be split between Flytrex and its aviation partner.

So far Flytrex has raised $11.5 million in funding. “We expect to be servicing hundreds of clients in a few months and then thousands early next year,” Bash said.

If Bash and Co. can make it work, drones will finally be crossing that far off horizon.

Drone Grocery Delivery Coming to Mobile, Alabama

I should apologize. In a post published on The Spoon this morning, I asked How Are You Getting Your Groceries? Delivery, Curbside Pickup or In-Store? In doing so, I failed to include “by drone delivery” among the choices, and it looks like I should have, at least, if you live in Mobile, Alabama.

Rouses Market, which has 64 stores along the Gulf Coast, announced yesterday that it has partnered with Deuce Drone to test grocery delivery by drone in Mobile this Fall (tip of the hat to Grocery Dive, who first reported the story). According to the press release, the drones will be able to deliver groceries in under 30 minutes.

Image via Deuce Drone’s website

There are plenty of other drone delivery programs in various stages of deployment around the world, but Rouses’ is the first we know of that’s specifically for groceries. In Ireland, Manna is doing restaurant delivery. Ditto for Uber in San Diego. Google’s Wing did latte delivery in Canberra, Australia. And in India, food delivery company Zomato acquired drone company TechEagle.

The press announcement didn’t specify anything around flight range or how much cargo each drone flight could/would carry. So we don’t know if it can replace a full trip to the grocery store or not (probably not, given how heavy groceries can get). We’ve reached out to Deuce Drone for more details. UPDATE: Deuce Drone sent us the following via email:

The drone currently being used for early development has a payload capability up to 12 lbs and will be used in the planned early demonstrations and revenue tests. Longer term, we plan to use a range of drones that are or will be available on the market that give us payload efficient payload ranges in the 0 to 2.5 lb, 2.5 lb to 10 lb, 10 to 25 lb and greater than 25 lb. Range for the current drone with full payload is about 6 miles one way at a maximum speed of nearly 40 mph.

There are a lot of other complications around drone delivery. Flight paths need to be created, areas like schools need to be avoided, and drones constantly buzzing overhead can get irritating.

But even with those considerations, Rouses’ grocery drone delivery is coming at the right time. With the pandemic forcing people to stay at home, they are turning to online grocery shopping in record numbers. All of those orders need to be fulfilled whether its through delivery or curbside pickup. Adding fast drone delivery, especially for smaller basket sizes, could ease logistical congestion and make curbside and delivery fulfillment more efficient.

So if you live in Mobile, by all means, let us know if you’re going to get your groceries by drone.

Ice Cream by Air! Unilever Tests Ben and Jerry’s Drone Delivery

In the future, when I have an ice cream craving, I won’t need to put on pants to walk across the street for a pint — I’ll just open the window and a drone will be waiting for me with some frozen treats.

This scenario is likely years away, but Unilever took a step toward that vision with a successful drone delivery test of Ben and Jerry’s, according to a press release issued this week. The company, partnering with Terra Drone Europe, demoed the drone delivery of three Ben & Jerry’s mini cups to a predetermined destination inside Unilever’s U.S. headquarters during its annual investor event.

The demo was part of Unilever’s Ice Cream Now service, which launched in 2017. The program uses apps such as UberEats to deliver sweet treats to customers using gas station and convenience store freezers as distribution points. There are at least 900 pickup points across the U.S., The Tampa Bay Times reports. The location and timeline of any commercial ice cream drone delivery roll out has not been determined yet, a spokesperson for Terra Drone told The Spoon.

“With regulations around future drone flights expected to become more flexible, the consumer goods company is preparing for a drone logistics service that will deliver products to more customers faster,” according to the press release.

The race is on to develop delivery drones. Uber unveiled its delivery drone last year and plans to test it this summer in San Diego. Amazon has been at work at its own drone program and patented tech that would charge drones in mid-air. Israeli tech company Flytrix has conducted drone deliveries in Reykjavik, Iceland, as well as a North Dakota golf course.

The big hurdle for drones isn’t so much the technology, but regulation, and if that’s ever cleared, a pint of non-dairy Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough will be flying my way.

Manna Raises Additional $3M in Funding for Drone Food Delivery in Ireland

Manna, an Irish drone delivery startup, announced today that it has added $3 million to its seed funding, led by Dynamo VC. This brings the total seed round raised by Manna to $5.2 million.

Manna plans to start with food deliveries in rural Ireland in March 2020, when it will work with restaurants and dark kitchens to deliver food across a two kilometer radius in as little as three minutes. Manna’s drones don’t fly higher than 500 ft and use a biodegradable linen string to lower food deliveries at their destinations. Manna has a partnership with food delivery service Flipdish, and will add on a fee of three to four euros for each delivery.

The skies are definitely getting more crowded, and 2020 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for drone delivery around the globe. Google has been testing drone delivery in Australia and recently started in here in the U.S. in Virginia. Uber Eats will officially kick off drone delivery in San Diego next summer. Amazon had promised its own drone delivery “within months,” though that was months ago at this point, so it’s safe to assume it’s been pushed into the new year. Fling is doing drone delivery in Thailand and, earlier this year, Zomato successfully tested its own drone program in India.

But drones still have quite a few hurdles to overcome before they become an everyday occurance. First, drones typically have a negative connotation with the general public, who can associate them with big, bad things like war and surveillance, or more minor inconveniences like the irritating buzz of a hobbyist flying them in a park.

Then there are the legal and safety issues surrounding fleets of drones flying overheard. There are startups like Airspace Link, which provides FAA clearance and flight paths to avoid ground risks, but federal, state and local governments are all grappling with how to regulate an entirely new category of commercial flight and all the complications that brings.

Manna founder Bobby Healy told The Irish Times that he thinks the Irish market will need up to 4,000 drones, with a drone doing five deliveries an hour. He estimates the UK market would need roughly 44,000 drones.

Video: Airspace Link Gets Immediate FAA Approvals for Commercial Drone Flights

The idea of drones zipping through the sky to deliver you burritos in just minutes sounds so cyberpunky and cool. Because it is! That’s why companies like Google and Uber Eats are investing so heavily in the technology.

But as with so many things, to get something that’s cool, there is a lot of very unglamorous grunt work going on behind the scenes. For commercial drone deliveries, Airspace Link is looking to make one of those bits of drudgery a little bit easier: plotting out and receiving official approval for flight paths.

Airspace Link works with both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and local governments to help commercial drone operators understand both air and ground risks and establish approved flight paths. Michael Healander, CEO and President of Airspace Link, told me by phone this week that his company is one of only five in the world that can authorize commercial drone flights near airports to ensure that they don’t interfere with things like air traffic. (Healander said that “near” is typically within five miles of an airport.)

But getting federal clearance for a flight path and understanding air-based risk is only one half of the equation. That’s why Airspace also works with local governments to get data around ground-based risks that the FAA wouldn’t know about. Those risks include things like schools, jails, or even emergency situations that a commercial drone operator would want to know about and avoid when establishing a flight plan for a delivery.

Airspace’s value prop, according to Healander, is that its software can automate that flight plan process quickly and automatically. To illustrate, Airspace Link posted a video on Linkedin this week, showing how the software works. The video is in no way “cool.” There is no dramatic footage of a drone soaring through a forest of skyscrapers. It’s a screen capture video of someone entering the basics of a drone flight: departure point, delivery point, time of flight etc. Once all that information is in, Airspace Link establishes a route that takes into consideration the ground-based risks like schools, establishes a route and altitude path and gets approval from the FAA in under a minute.

We are at the very beginning stages of drone delivery, with Google testing the concept in Virginia, and Uber Eats planning it for next summer in San Diego. If these services catch on with consumers, there will be a halo effect with startups like AirSpace Link popping up to do more of the grunt work so drones deliveries can actually take off and be cool.

Newsletter: Making the Convenience of Delivery More Convenient, Impractical Home Kitchen Gadgets

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Talk to most individuals in today’s restaurant biz, and they’ll tell you that delivery is table stakes at this point. But a slew of news stories from the last week suggests some aren’t satisfied with simply inking a deal with a third-party service. Now, companies are adding haute cuisine, drones, and alternative locations to the list of things they can offer via delivery.

Yesterday, 7-Eleven joined these efforts by releasing 7NOW Pins, a feature that lets customers order via the convenience store chain’s 7NOW app and get their goods delivered to public places like parks, beaches, and sports stadiums. For 7-Eleven, delivering to these so-called hot spots makes a lot of sense, since drinking Slurpees is practically as common an outdoor activity as volleyball.

7-Eleven’s idea isn’t new. Domino’s launched a similar program in April of 2018 and has since been delivering pies to more than 200,000 of these public spaces around the country.

Domino’s, however, was focused more this past week on another delivery-related initiative: in-car ordering. Ever since it announced a partnership with Xevo, who makes in-car commerce technology, the pizza chain has been working to bring in-car ordering for delivery and pickup orders to more drivers around the U.S. As of last week, Chevrolet owners whose cars are equipped with the company’s Marketplace platform can order Domino’s while they’re still en route to home, and, because of the way Marketplace is configured, can do so without ever having to touch their smartphone.

Uber Eats Takes Haute Cuisine to New Heights
But maybe pizza and Slurpees aren’t your thing. No worries. Other companies are applying the convenience of delivery to more upscale foods, including Juniper & Ivy’s “In-N-Haute” burger, which Uber Eats will soon make available via drone in San Diego. While as of right now the drones will be dropping orders off with an Uber Eats driver who will finish the delivery, using them for even part of the process can save significant time, which means the $21 dollar hamburger would theoretically reach your door in a much fresher state.

Interestingly, Uber Eats’ other drone delivery test is with McDonald’s, the polar opposite of haute cuisine. But testing with two such extremes makes sense. As I wrote recently:

Whichever is more successful in terms of both quality of the food when it finally arrives at your door step as well as overall customer satisfaction with the experience, will tell Uber a lot about where to bet its hand in the upcoming drone delivery race.

Now if they could just figure out how to drone-drop haute burgers to my next beach trip . . .

The mycusini chocolate 3D printer

Impractical Cooking Fun for the Whole Family
Back in the world of at-home culinary devices, Mike Wolf dug into an impractical-but-so-cool activity for the kitchen: 3D printing chocolate.

The mycusini printer functions much like other 3D printers, only in this case it dispenses chocolate layer by layer. The device is expected to ship to backers by the end of 2019. Sadly for Mike and other U.S. fans of choco-printing, mycusini will only be available in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand initially.

Statesiders might instead look to McCormick’s new gimmick: a grill integrated with a DJ system that changes tracks based on what you’re cooking. As Catherine Lamb wrote this week, the SUMR HITS 5000 grill “links pre-recorded music and sounds to a weight-sensitive condiment tray and the grill itself. So when you pick up the hot sauce or flip your veggie burger, new sound bites play from a speaker presumably embedded somewhere inside the grill.”

While the SUMR HITS 5000 grill probably won’t be making it on checklists of any serious grillers, it could at the very least provide a few entertaining moments for upcoming summer BBQs this year. Throw in an order of delivery Slurpees, and you have yourself a legit party.

Until next time,

Jenn

Zomato Successfully Tests Drone Food Delivery in India

Indian food delivery service Zomato successfully tested its drone program this week, bringing the world one step closer to getting their dinners dropped off by air.

From the Zomato blog post announcing the test flight:

We met all our parameters and were able to cover a distance of 5kms, in about 10 minutes, with a peak speed of 80 kmph, carrying a payload of 5 kgs – using a hybrid drone – fusion of rotary wing and fixed wings on a single drone.

As Zomato points out, for a crowded city like Delhi, congested streets and sidewalks make fast food delivery near-impossible. Drones, on the other hand, can fly high above the masses of people and cars to zip across town and deliver a hot meal before it gets cold.

Zomato’s news came on the same day Uber Eats announced it was looking to fire up its drone delivery program this summer in San Diego, and a week after Amazon said it would begin commercial drone delivery within months. For its part, Google’s Wing division has already been testing drone delivery in Australia, and earlier this year got FAA approval do to commercial drone delivery in the U.S.

Zomato, like Uber Eats, isn’t focusing on drone delivery to your front door. Zomato said that instead it would create a launch facility near a cluster of restaurants, and then drop off at a hub near densely populated areas. From there, presumably either a person or a rover robot would make the last mile drop off to the customer. This hub and spoke model has the advantage of requiring fewer flight paths that need regulation/supervision. 

I’ll admit that I was initially skeptical about drone delivery. The rules and regulation around them are complex and still being worked out. Drones make lots of noise. And if a drone malfunctions, it can crash into buildings or worse, plummet from the sky and injure people.

But every company getting into the drone business is obviously aware of this and going to great lengths to publicly highlight their safety protocols. The Zomato blog post made a point of this as well, writing:

The final design of our drone is lightweight, and treats safety as a top priority. It has inbuilt sensors and an onboard computer to sense and avoid static and dynamic objects, overall making it more efficient for autonomous flights. Although being fully automated, each drone is currently being tested with (remote) pilot supervision to ensure 100% safety. Over time, as we have more data, we might not need remote pilot supervision.

If safety protocols and flight paths can be worked out, then drones do provide an efficient way for restaurants to make deliveries in big cities.