7-Eleven beats Google and Amazon to drone delivery service in the US
We’re starting to hear more and more about drones, and the fact that 7-11 beat Alphabet and Amazon to the punch with a delivery service is pretty big news to us. We suspect we are in very early innings with this aspect of our Disruptive Technology theme, but we’re certainly open to having burritos, burgers, and shakes dropped off from Chipotle and Shake Shack as well as a nice bottle of The Prisoner from Orin Swift all within minutes of punching the order in on our iPhone. Glorious.
7-Eleven, the world’s largest convenience store chain, shared new numbers from its drone delivery experiment today. Seventy-seven customers in Reno, Nev., have now received items ordered from 7-Eleven delivered to their doorsteps via drone. All 77 flights were from one store to a dozen select customers who live within a mile of the shop.
7-Eleven has partnered with the drone maker Flirtey for its delivery pilot. It marks the first regular commercial drone delivery service to operate in the United States, flying ahead of other, potentially bigger drone delivery projects that haven’t yet been able to take off in the U.S. — like Alphabet’s Project Wing and Amazon’s Prime Air, the latter of which only demonstrated its first delivery to a customer last week.
For the November drone delivery service, customers ordered food and beverages, but mostly over-the-counter medicines. The drones used a GPS system to locate a customer’s house, where the drone wouldn’t land, but rather hover near the ground before lowering the package.Deliveries were completed, on average, less than ten minutes after the order was placed, according to a statement from Flirtey.
