Walmart is expanding its drone delivery program with its partner Wing to 100 additional stores across Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa, building on years of testing in Texas and Arkansas. The expanded program is set to reach 3M more households.
The company first began doing commercial drone deliveries in 2021 and has since completed 150,000 deliveries through its partnerships with Wing and Zipline. The deliveries take about 20 minutes on average, with a four-minute average flight time, according to Walmart. So far the drone service has focused on small, urgent items like groceries and medicines, but that could change as its capacity increases.
Wing's drones have a payload of two pounds, but they company is working on a new model that can carry up to five pounds, which means they'll be able to carry about half of the 120,000 items typically found at a Walmart Supercenter. While the new drones won't be able to carry a gallon of milk, which weighs eight pounds, it'll be able to bring you a quart to get you through the morning.
Wing CEO Adam Woodworth says that customers commonly order baby wipes (for obvious reasons) and surprisingly eggs — which he later learned was to test the technology's handling capabilities.
Wing told Business Insider that the immediate reaction of drone delivery service being introduced to a neighborhood is often a negative one. However the company does demos to get communities more comfortable with the idea, and eventually the questions go from negative to, “Okay, well, when is it going to come to my house?”