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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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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.

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.

FieldDock Project Gets $1.4M Grant for AgTech Drone Base Station

The FieldDock looks like something the Skywalkers had on their moisture farm on Tatooine. It has a bunch of antennae and solar panels and in the middle of everything is a bay that opens up to reveal a landing pad for a drone. And while FieldDock is the stuff of the future, this week the project received a grant to make it happen closer to today.

Nadia Shakoor, Ph.D., a senior researcher at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, was awarded a three-year $1.4 million grant from the National Institute for Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation to develop the FieldDock. Here’s the official description of the project from the press release:

The FieldDock will be a novel all-in-one system that integrates a sensor base station with GWAS/G x E x M/crop model edge processor, remote wireless sensor network and autonomous UAV drone deployment to generate a daily scalable, cohesive and interconnected set of field microclimate data. FieldDock will capture measurable plant traits, water usage, overall environmental and soil conditions as well as daily snapshots of how a crop is performing in real world conditions. The FieldDock platform will run entirely on renewable energy and is designed to ultimately have a zero-carbon footprint.

The data collected by the drone and FieldDock system will ideally be able to help researchers and plant breeders developing energy-efficient crops hardy enough to withstand variable climates, as well as guide crop management and watering decisions made by farmers.

While probably the most sci-fi looking solution to do such things, FieldDock is not the only high-tech solution aiming to help deliver actionable data to farmers. In March, Arable launched the second-gen version of its sensor that monitors plant and moisture conditions on farms. And CropX, which makes in-ground soil sensors, acquired irrigation tools provider CropMetrics at the start of the year.

All of these tools have the same goal of providing farmers with deeper insights into their operations to reduce waste and boost yield. With some money to further develop her project, we’ll see if the Force is with Shakoor and FieldDock.

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.

AirSpace Link Landed $4M in Funding for its Drone Flightpath Clearance System

AirSpace Link, a Detroit-based startup that automates flight path and FAA clearance for commercial drones, raised $4 million in seed funding in the second half of last year, TechCrunch uncovered yesterday.

According to Crunchbase, AirSpace Link raised a $1 million pre-seed round in September led by 2048 Ventures, and a $3 million seed in December led by Indicator Ventures.

The easiest way to think about AirSpace Link is as a set of turn-by-turn directions for commercial drones. As delivery of packages and hamburgers becomes more of a reality , the sky above us will get more crowded. With AirSpace Link’s cloud-based software, a drone operator inputs their starting and delivery points. AirSpace Link then charts an aerial course and gets Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval in seconds so the drone doesn’t interfere with air traffic.

In a phone interview last month, AirSpace Link President and CEO Michael Healander told me that his was one of just five companies in the world that can authorize commercial drone flights near airports.

In addition to air traffic and obstacles, AirSpace Link goes one step further by working with local governments to consider ground-based risks as it charts the skies for a clear path. Working with local governments, AirSpace Link also navigates drones around things like schools, prisons and emergency situations you wouldn’t want a drone flying over.

Google, Amazon and Uber all have drone delivery ambitions. Google started trialing package delivery in Virginia last year and Uber Eats says it will conduct drone deliveries in San Diego this summer. As these services come to market, new sets of issues (like flight path creation) will arise. There will be a halo effect that spur the launch of more supporting startups like AirSpace Link.

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.

The Food Tech Shöw: Umlauts, Delivery Drones & Sweetgeen 3.0

After a mini-break following the Smart Kitchen Summit, The Spoon editors were back this week to record a brand new editor roundtable edition of the Food Tech Show.

Jenn Marston, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb and myself jumped back on the mic to discuss the following stories:

As always, enjoy the podcast and please leave a review if you enjoy what you hear.

You can listen to the Food Tech Show by on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, by downloading direct to your device or just by clicking play below.

Uber Eats Reveals New Drone Design. Here’s How it Could Work With Uber Ghost Kitchens

Uber unveiled its new Uber Eats drone at the Forbes Under 30 Summit today. The company will use this design for actual food deliveries when it begins testing in San Diego next summer.

The new Uber Eats drone has six rotors that rotate, allowing the drone to take off vertically. Once the device is airborne, the rotors turn horizontally to enable faster flight. The drone can carry a payload of “dinner for two,” though it is not meant for direct dropoff at someone’s door. Since the drone only has a round trip range of 12 miles or 18 minutes of flight time, it will be used for the “middle mile” — transporting food from one facility to a staging area where a driver will pick up and make the final delivery.

Adding the driver may see like an extraneous step, but it actually makes more sense if you think about how Uber might use ghost kitchens. Ghost kitchens are shared commercial kitchen facilities that rent space to different restaurants wanting to expand their delivery operations. These virtual restaurants tend to be delivery only and only accessible to customers via app like Uber Eats.

Uber Eats reportedly opened up a ghost kitchen in Paris earlier this year, and just this month opened up a virtual restaurant with Food Network personality, Rachel Ray. It’s not hard to imagine Uber investing more in ghost kitchen spaces, using them to launch more exclusive restaurants that are only available via Uber, and literally topping the buildings off with some kind of drone launch facility on the roof. Centralizing a bunch of virtual restaurants in one launch hub would certainly make using the short haul drones more efficient.

Another advantage to creating a hub and spoke model for Uber drones would be limiting the complexity of dealing with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to create flight paths. Rather than having to chart different flight paths (and any accompanying obstacles or complications) on the fly for different homes, Uber could re-use a set number of flight paths to the same drop off points over and over.

Uber’s drone reveal comes after Google got FAA approval earlier this month to begin commercial drone delivery in Virginia. At the same time, Google’s Wing has partnered for deliveries for FedEx and Walgreens, and unlike Uber’s drones, Wing appears to be dropping off directly at a consumers house via a tether that lowers.

Regardless, there are still a ton of details that need to be worked out before drone delivery is an everyday thing. As I wrote about last week, when it comes to delivery, we are watching the world change in real time, and having to figure it out as we go.

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.

Uber Aims to Start Testing Drone Food Delivery in San Diego This Summer

We knew Uber was accelerating its drone program, and as of today, we have a few more clues as to just just how fast the company is going. Bloomberg got a first-hand look at Uber Elevate, the company’s drone division, and how it would work for food delivery. Though the test flight Bloomberg watched was a bust because of the weather, there was still a bunch we learned from the article.

Uber has been testing drone food delivery with McDonald’s in San Diego this year, developing flight paths and even working on new forms of packaging to keep food at the right temperatures. As of now Uber’s plan isn’t to fly a drone directly to your driveway. Instead, it will fly to a drop-off location where an Uber Eats driver in a car will pick it up and bring it the rest of the way. Eventually, Uber predicts it will land the drone on the top of parked Uber cars.

This may seem overly complicated, but Uber says a drone can travel 1.5 miles in 7 minutes versus 21 minutes by ground. So a drone could fly past city congestion to shave off delivery time, even with a pick-up car involved.

But that’s still a ways away for the company, which has not gotten FAA approval for commercial delivery yet. Uber told Bloomberg that it believes it is three years out from drone delivery happening in select markets.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of issues that Uber will need to work out. Inclement weather, for one, the danger posed by mid-air collisions into trees, wires or other drones for another, and also the noise (just ask the town of Canberra, Australia about the drone of drones).

Additionally, Uber is going to have to contend with fleets of other drones in the sky, all vying to bring you a burrito. Last week, Amazon unveiled it’s high-tech transforming delivery drone and said it would be making commercial deliveries “within months.” And earlier this year, Google’s Wing division got FAA approval to make drone deliveries.

Uber Elevate will evidently unveil a new drone of its own later this year that can reach speeds of 70 mph. The race to bring drone delivery to market is certainly speeding up.