Walmart unveils largest-ever drone delivery expansion at CES

© Gary Arbach | Dreamstime.com - Walmart Supercenter

PRESS RELEASE

Sky High Ambitions: Walmart To Make Largest Drone Delivery Expansion of Any U.S. Retailer 

Drone delivery will be available for up to 1.8 million additional households, encompassing entire Dallas Fort-Worth metroplex

Walmart is reaching new heights, offering our drone delivery for up to 75% of the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) population. We’re building on our momentum with the largest drone delivery footprint of any U.S. retailer.

“This expansion will bring the ultimate convenience of drone delivery to communities across the DFW area. Customers will have access to a broad assortment of items from Walmart available for delivery to their home in just minutes,” said Prathibha Rajashekhar, senior vice president, Innovation & Automation, Walmart U.S. “Drone delivery is not just a concept of the future, it’s happening now and will soon be a reality for millions of additional Texans.”

Our drone delivery expansion includes stores across more than 30 towns and municipalities in the DFW metroplex, marking the first time a U.S. retailer has offered drone delivery to this many households in a single market. The deliveries will be powered by on-demand drone delivery providers, Wing and Zipline. Both are approved by the FAA to fly their drones without a dedicated observer being able to see the drone at all times, known as Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), which will enable drone delivery to more Texans than ever before.

Drone delivery gives customers an even faster delivery option, getting items to them in 30 minutes or less and some deliveries can happen as fast as 10 minutes. This is an addition to other speedy delivery methods like Express Delivery in three hours or less, Late-Night Delivery until 10 p.m. and InHome – with an option for delivery directly to a customer’s refrigerator – ensuring customers have what they want, when and how they want it.

Over the last two years trialing drone delivery, we’ve completed over 20,000 safe deliveries. Walmart has seen customers use our drone service for many reasons. This includes when they need an item in a pinch, like a forgotten ingredient or over the counter cold medicine, or simply because it’s convenient. Some of the most popular items ordered include snacks and beverages, satisfying an afternoon sweet tooth or caffeine craving. Drones can also deliver several items at a time, such as supplies for a movie night at home, a last-minute birthday gift or ingredients for baking cookies, including fragile items like eggs.

Customers can order thousands of items ranging from baby wipes to birthday candles. To place an order, simply visit wing.com/Walmart or visit www.flyzipline.com/get-delivery. The delivery radius for stores offering the service will be up to 10 miles.

Working closely with drone experts like Wing and Zipline that focus on speed, safety and sustainability, Walmart can do what we do best: serve customers no matter how or when they want to shop and help them live better.

Wing delivers packages directly from businesses to homes in minutes, providing customers a fast and convenient way to get what they need, when they need it. With four years of commercial residential service in the U.S. and on three continents, and a network approach to scaled drone delivery similar to efficient rideshares, Wing is working to deliver people’s packages more efficiently and safely as part of an automated logistics system that routinely moves packages by the millions.

“Our first few months delivering to Walmart customers have made it clear: Demand for drone delivery is real,” said Wing CEO Adam Woodworth. “The response has been incredible from customers ordering drone delivery from Walmart every day, and it’s a testament to our partnership that we’re now expanding our footprint to bring this innovative delivery option to millions of Texans. If this milestone is any indication, we believe 2024 is the year of drone delivery.”

Zipline is the world’s largest autonomous delivery company that helps health systems, restaurants and retailers provide fast, precise and convenient deliveries. With Zipline’s drone delivery network, businesses can offer a magical delivery experience, reach more customers, increase revenue and improve operational efficiency. Since 2016, Zipline has flown more than 60 million commercial autonomous miles and delivered millions of products, including more than 13 million vaccine doses. The company currently completes a commercial delivery every 70 seconds and has operations on four continents.

“Autonomous delivery is finally ready for national scale in the U.S. Zipline is excited to enable Walmart’s vision of providing customer delivery so fast it feels like teleportation,” said Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, co-founder and CEO of Zipline. “Walmart is leading the U.S. in using robotics and AI to help people save money and live better. We’re excited for folks across Dallas-Fort Worth to experience delivery that is 7x as fast, zero emissions and whisper quiet with our next-generation technology.”

This groundbreaking move represents Walmart’s ongoing commitment to innovation and to revolutionizing the way customers shop and receive their orders. The future of delivery is here, and we’re reaching new heights with our DFW expansion. With nearly 4,700 stores located within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population, we’re uniquely positioned to scale when that time comes.

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Wing and Walmart continue to expand service to millions of customers in Dallas-Fort Worth, amid new Dallas-wide FAA approvals

By: Adam Woodworth, CEO

We’re kicking off 2024 by making drone delivery a reality for even more people: Wing and Walmart are expanding service to millions of new customers, leveraging Wing’s airspace approvals that facilitate service across the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) community. Wing and Walmart will launch our newest drone delivery locations in the coming months and plan to complete the expansion within the year. 

Last August, Wing and Walmart launched service together at two locations in DFW – reaching 60,000 homes via drone delivery. In our first 4 months of service, the response from Walmart customers has been overwhelmingly positive, using the service to order range of products, including quick meals, groceries, household essentials, and over-the-counter medicines. And as our customers in Frisco and Lewisville know, on average those deliveries arrived in under 30 minutes and provided a convenient way to get what they needed, when they needed it.

“I had a Walmart delivery from Wing when we were running low on key ingredients for [a] recipe. We were so impressed that our eggs were delivered safely and likely had a safer journey than traveling by car in our trunk.” – Customer, Frisco, TX.

“We ordered through the app and received fresh guacamole and some candy within 15 mins. The kids enjoyed the excitement of watching the drone on the app until it dropped our package safely in our driveway. Will definitely use it again. Much quicker than a drive to the store.” – Customer, Frisco, TX.

Our first months delivering to Walmart customers have made one thing clear: Demand for drone delivery is real. For instance, on a given Sunday, Walmart customers placed over 130 orders to ensure they were prepped and ready for the big game – receiving items like chicken, sour cream, avocados and limes. Via the Walmart store in Frisco, our regular customers order on average  ~2 times per week – with our top 25% customers averaging ~3 orders per week. Our average flight time is 5 minutes!

Wing’s drone delivery service offers a safe and convenient way to get your everyday needs (or last-minute forgotten items!) delivered nearly instantly, and our recent regulatory approvals mean we will be able to reach more customers throughout DFW.

 In 2019, Wing was the first drone delivery company in the United States to receive a Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate. Now, Wing’s new environmental approval in the DFW metroplex marks the first time the FAA has approved an entire metro area for drone delivery. While Wing has already been serving customers at up to a 6-mile radius from nests in Frisco and Lewisville, Wing’s recent summary grant enables us to move toward beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations without visual observers across DFW and similar airspace surrounding other major U.S. cities, adding to the momentum of the drone delivery industry at large. This marks a paradigm shift in the way U.S. regulators are approaching approvals for these types of advanced BVLOS drone operations.

We believe 2024 will be the year of drone delivery—and our growing service with Walmart is a huge step forward. “Congratulations to Wing and Walmart on a growing partnership,” said City of Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney.  “In 2022, Wing picked Frisco to launch its first commercial drone delivery service in a major U.S. metro area.  We consider our entire community an innovation lab and our residents embrace this service.  Nowadays, Wing is more than a novelty in Frisco.  The drone delivery service has evolved into a welcome, daily convenience for essentials like recipe ingredients, eggs, limes or over-the-counter medicines.  The ease and efficiency of Wing’s drone delivery service enhances quality of life.

If you live in the DFW area and you’d like to see if your home is available for drone delivery service, visit wing.com/walmart. To read more about today’s news from Walmart, visit their newsroom.

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Our Next Flight With Walmart

By Keller Rinaudo Cliffton

Today, we’re announcing a landmark moment for Zipline and the delivery industry: starting later this year, we’ll integrate our new home delivery solution into Walmart stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area so that we can serve millions of Texans. This expansion will increase the Walmart customers that Zipline serves by 1,000x, compared to our current operations with the Retailer.

Since 2021, we’ve been working with Walmart in Pea Ridge, Arkansas to deliver items from a store to customers’ homes with our enterprise delivery platform, which is designed for long-range flights. We’ve been blown away by how quickly customers have taken a sci-fi technology and fully integrated it into their lives in ways that are both convenient and mundane.

At this point, drone delivery is totally normal in Northwest Arkansas. Our average customer rating there is 9.2 /10, and one Walmart customer recently told us that “Zipline deliveries let us spend more time together as a family.”

Zipline operates the largest autonomous delivery system on earth. We have flown more than 60 million commercial autonomous miles and completed almost 900,000 commercial autonomous deliveries. We make a delivery somewhere in the world every 70 seconds. We’ve learned that for this to scale nationally, each delivery must be extremely precise, reliable, and whisper-quiet.

That’s why our next generation system uses an autonomous delivery “droid” to gently and quietly set packages onto areas as small as a patio table or a doorstep — an experience that feels magical.

Our team has spent millions of hours developing our next generation technology. By the time we conduct a pilot with Walmart later this year, we’ll have completed extensive testing and tens of thousands of practice deliveries. After our pilot, we’ll begin to integrate the new system into Walmart stores across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Over time, we plan to serve millions of Dallas residents with thousands of quiet, precise, fast Zipline deliveries every day. It will feel like Teleportation.

People who run out of their favorite snack, forgot to get eggs on their grocery run, need diapers for their baby, or have to get over-the-counter medicine for a family member will be able to get those items instantly and conveniently. By choosing Zipline, they’ll keep cars off the road and CO2 out of the atmosphere. At scale, this will make roads safer and cities greener.

Zipline’s mission is to create the world’s first delivery system that serves all people equally. With 90% of the U.S. population within 10 miles of a Walmart store, we are now one step closer to that goal. It’s 1 am in the quest to fulfill our mission, but we are grateful for bold retailers like Walmart who share our vision and are choosing Zipline to make it happen.

Teleportation is coming and I can’t wait for you to experience it. Stay tuned.