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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Manna

Irish Drone Delivery Startup Manna Raises $25M Series A

Drone delivery startup Manna announced today that it has raised a $25 million Series A round of funding led by Draper Esprit, with participation from Team Europe, partners of DST Global, as well as returning investors Dynamo Ventures, Atlantic Bridge and Elkstone. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Manna to $30.2 million.

Based in Dublin, Ireland, Manna operates unmanned aerial vehicles for high-speed deliveries over the last mile. Drones fly out of a main hub carrying food orders and can reach a customer’s home in just three minutes. The customer uses something similar to a Google Map image of their home divided up into a grid and select where the drone should fly to. Once at that location, the drone hovers 50 feet above the ground and lowers the order down via tether.

Manna says that a single operator can conduct roughly 20 deliveries per hour. Manna is currently piloting drone delivery in Galway, Ireland, where it is doing up to 100 deliveries a day. In today’s press announcement, Manna said that more than 30 percent of Galway’s 10,000 residents are already using its service.

Drone delivery is quickly becoming a reality around the world as more pilot programs are launched and more companies get funded. Flytrex, which is testing drone deliveries with Walmart in North Carolina, raised $8 million last month. Dragontail Systems and Pizza Hut have partnered for drone delivery in Israel. And iFood and Speedbird Aero are deploying drone delivery in Brazil.

Here in the U.S., government agencies are clarifying rules around commercial drone operation. In December of last year, the FAA announced its final rules around the safety of drone flying. With more clarity will come more innovation and more drone delivery availability.

In addition to its pilot delivery program in Galway, Manna has also kept busy on the business development front. The company has signed partnerships with JustEat, Samsung, Ben & Jerrys and Tesco.

If you want to learn more about the future of drone delivery, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation virtual conference on May 18. Manna CEO Bobby Healy will be speaking, along with a host of other executives across the robotics, restaurant and retail landscape. Get your ticket today!

Manna Now Doing 50 – 100 Drone Deliveries Per Day in Galway, Ireland

It’s fitting that on this St. Patrick’s Day, we check in with Irish drone delivery startup, Manna, which is beginning to take off. The company is now doing between 50 and 100 deliveries per day in the city of Galway, Ireland, Manna CEO and Founder, Bobby Healy told me during a video chat this week.

Galway is a city of 80,000 people on the western coast of Ireland. Manna has established a drone takeoff platform on top of a Tesco in town, and makes food and drink deliveries with partners like the Camile Thai restaurant chain.

According to Healy, the average drone delivery time from takeoff is three minutes, with the drones flying between 50 and 80 meters (164 to 262 ft.) high at a speed of 80 km/h (50 mph).

When users place an order, they designate a specific area on their property for the drone to fly to. For example, when ordering from Camile, customers use the Camile app and select drone delivery. They are then presented with a GoogleMap image of their home that has been divided into a grid. The user picks a specific grid. When the drone arrives, it hovers 15 meters (50 ft) above that spot and lowers the food down by tether via a biodegradable linen thread.

One Manna drone can do between six and seven deliveries per hour, and a single drone operator can do 20 deliveries in an hour. A typical payload from Camile is five to six pounds, which includes two meals and drinks, and with an average flight time of just three minutes, food and lattes arrive still hot and is delivered in a contactless manner.

Even though the drone program is still in the pilot phase, Camile Founder & CEO Brody Sweeney said during that same video chat that Manna is doing almost 70 percent of Camile’s deliveries in Galway. “This is a real part of our future,” Sweeney said, “We are primarily suburban based, so drones are perfect for delivery. We haven’t worked out all the details, but we think it will be less than [current car-based] delivery.”

Healy said Manna is making deliveries at night and its drones can even brave inclement weather like rain and wind, though the energy output to do so is greater and limits the total number of trips a drone can make.

We’ve seen a lot of movement for drone delivery over the last year. Dragontail Systems is starting to do pizza delivery by drones in Tel Aviv, Israel. Walmart is testing drone delivery with Flytrex in North Carolina. And iFood is making drone deliveries in Brazil.

While there has been definite progress in drone delivery, there are still regulatory issues that must be overcome. Here in the U.S. the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) clarified its rules around safety at the end of last year. And Healy said that Manna is working with European regulators to conduct flights that aren’t line of sight.

Healy said that Manna will be bringing its service to the U.S. during Q2 of this year, and a broader rollout around the world over the next 18 months. He also said that Manna should be serving 100,000 customers by July of this year.

CORRECTION: This article originally misstated the population of Galway as 10,000. It is 80,000, and Manna is servicing 10,000 of them. We regret the error.

Manna to Make Drone Delivery Flights Outside Dublin, Ireland Next Month

Meal delivery by drone is coming to the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland at the end of March, courtesy of the Irish startup, Manna, reports Bloomberg. Manna will run hundreds of tests flights with different food partners to make deliveries to the University College Dublin campus over the next few weeks as part of a bigger plan to provide permanent service to small Irish towns.

Manna’s MNA-1090 drone operates similarly to the Google Wing drone, in that it hovers above its destination and lowers its package on a retractable tether. According to Blooomberg the Manna drone can carry a meal payload weighing 4.4 pounds, and can make a delivery more than 2 kilometers out in under three minutes, even in inclement weather.

Drones are set to have a pretty big year in food delivery. In addition to Manna’s impending takeoff, Unilever, through its Ben & Jerry’s brand, has partnered with Terra Drone Europe for airborne ice cream tests. Uber Eats is planning to launch its drone food delivery in San Diego this summer. And the aforementioned Google Wing is already making deliveries in Virginia.

Questions remain, however, about the ultimately viability of drone delivery. Regulations around toting pizza pies in the skies has yet to be worked out (though startups like Air Space Link are helping sort that out). Then there is the very real issue of privacy and noise and how people will react to fleets of drones flying over their houses.

The promise of drones, however, according to Manna, is that they can provide fast, big city-type food delivery to smaller towns at a lower cost. This, in turn will make delivery more profitable and drone operations more scalable.

If drones can provide a lower cost way of getting a piping hot burrito delivered to people’s patio, all the hindrances might just be forgiven.

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.