Big Macs from Heaven

Uber trials fast-food delivery using drones in San Diego

Last week, Uber announced that it will start testing the use drones to deliver fast food in San Diego this summer. The company has been working with McDonald’s as an early partner for this programme.

In 2018, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) selected San Diego as one of 10 cities to test commercial drone delivery services. The city teamed up with Uber, which has been working with McDonald’s for several months to design special packages to keep food warm, ice cream cold and everything intact during transit.

This is turning into a real trend. Google already has approval from the FAA to make unmanned commercial deliveries in Blacksburg, Virginia as part of its Wing initiative, and this month, Amazon unveiled a revolutionary drone it hopes will deliver household goods.

The team behind Uber Elevate, the aerial operations arm of the ride-sharing service, is still waiting on FAA approval, but it believes its drone service is the future of food delivery. The company expects commercial business to begin in the coming months in San Diego and pricing to be consistent with that of regular delivery through Uber Eats ― that’s about $8.50 on average in the San Diego area.

For safety reasons, Uber Elevate has no immediate plans to send drones directly to homes. Instead, the machines will fly to designated safe landing zones where waiting couriers will pick up and deliver items. Drones might also land on roofs of parked Uber cars outfitted with a QR code, and these would then transport the food to its destination.

The company is betting that drones will become a popular delivery transport thanks to their promised savings in time and eventually price. For a delivery 1.5 miles away, ground transportation takes about 21 minutes; drones can make the trip in about seven minutes. Uber Elevate plans to unveil its customized drone in 2019, reaching speeds of up to 70 miles per hour.

Ultimately, using drones, Uber will be able to get meals to customers faster and enable restaurants to reach more customers. Uber Eats is a very important business segment for the company, one that’s growing more than its core ride-hailing platform. In the first quarter of 2019, the division saw gross bookings grow 108% to over $3 billion.

But drone deliveries in cities won’t be easy for Uber or any other operator. Cities are the most challenging environment for making drone delivery work well. The inability to deliver directly to the 10th floor of an office or apartment block means that two-stage logistics are needed, as Uber proposes, and this will push costs up. The density of buildings, cars, street furniture and people in a city means that it will only be possible to use smaller drones, which will limit the size of items that these vehicles can deliver. And there are more hazards for drones in a city than in the suburbs including cables, laundry lines, aerial signs and street lighting. If the sky becomes busy with different providers of drone delivery, there will be a need for careful air traffic control, which is just in the early stages of development.

There’s also a strong social acceptability angle to having large numbers of drones delivering items all over a city. No one yet knows whether people will warm to the new approach as they enjoy the greater convenience, or if they will regard drones as a nuisance. There are also substitutes being developed in the form of small, electric, autonomous delivery vehicles that drive along the pavement or sidewalk.