Walmart’s Drone Delivery Expands to 270 Stores | Fast Five Shorts

Walmart and Wing are expanding their drone delivery partnership to 150 US stores over the next year, with plans to reach over 270 locations by 2027, covering more than 40 million potential customers, according to Supply Chain Dive.

The expansion builds on the existing operations in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Atlanta, with planned launches in Houston, Orlando, Tampa, Charlotte, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Miami.

Dallas delivery volume has tripled in the past six months, with drones flying up to 60 miles per hour and traveling up to 12 miles round trip, carrying items up to five pounds.

Wing CEO stated, quote, the question is no longer if Wing and Walmart will deliver to your city, it's when.

The expansion helps Walmart compete with Amazon in the fast shipping race, with both Companies focused on 30 minutes or less delivery times.

Drones are designed to carry items typically requested for rapid delivery, such as eggs, bread, thread, phone chargers, or other small essentials.

Chris, are you pro or con?

Walmart and Wing scaling drone delivery to 270 stores.

Oh, and I'm pro.

I mean, I mean, we've talked about this, this concept a lot on the show over the years.

You know, it's been a while since we've.

I think it's been a little bit of time since we talked about it, so it's kind of cool to see it coming back.

I've always liked this concept, particularly for Walmart.

And we talked to the man in charge, Mr. Greg Cathy at NRF, the man in charge of this program, literally the day this announcement was made.

And he said, he said he gave us some interesting nuggets.

He said they are seeing strong usage for it across four key areas.

When I went back and looked at the interview, he said, you know, the items that people forget, they're using drones for that, they're using it for childcare essentials, especially when your kid gets sick, they're using it for pet treats.

Which is the one where I'm like, okay, that's random.

And then the last thing, which was really cool, which is like, they're using it to surprise and delight people.

Like, he used the example of, like, your kid's birthday party where you have, like, all the presents show up via drone.

Or I was thinking, like, you know, if you're kind of like that type of guy, you could, like, have.

On Valentine's Day, you could have a drone deliver, you know, flowers and chocolates to somebody, even though that'd be kind of super lame too.

I'm not, I'm gonna admit that.

But, like, but you can see the angles where you could take this and so, but the thing that I like most about it, and I've always liked about it, is it says to me, convenience drones are Walmart's entry point into the almost $400 billion non fuel convenience business.

And I'm no math Expert, Anne, but 400 is a lot of bees.

And I may be rounding up there because it's probably like 3:30 ish from what I saw, but you know, it'll grow.

So 400, that's a lot of bees.

And that's, that's what's going on here.

That's why this is a smart move.

Yeah, I, I was just surprised by how quickly, I mean they're going to be in 200 and was it 270 locations in the net in one year?

Like Coastal too.

Right?

So like this is coming fast and furious.

And I think that's the really interesting thing here.

I mean, ever since we interviewed Pratibha Raja Shakar, she was, she talked to us about drones two years ago at NRF from Walmart and she was talking about the use case of this, it really I think flipped my opinion of whether or not drones are the, the future, whether we'll see them.

But I do really think that we've kind of crossed the chasm into like, yeah, this is coming.

Walmart's going to, it's kind of like the Waymo driverless taxis.

Like, I think it's just, it's.

When are we going to start to see critical mass here?

And this is going to bring us critical mass.

This is going to make drone delivery something that people are more comfortable with.

I think people will start to see the benefits of it.

Fewer cars on the road, faster delivery, being able to get to urban locations more simply.

So I think this is going to be kind of a cool thing that we'll start to see around the country and I'm excited for where it goes.

Also, if you've been watching Pluribus, I.

Mean, I have not been watching after.

The joining, this is how the aliens are going to deliver all of our products.

They all come via drone delivery, whether it's, you know, dinner or taking our garbage out, all kinds of things.

So I think, yes, drones are here.

Really excited for Greg, Kathy and the team at Walmart.

And I'm excited to get my first drone delivery once this, this reaches Minneapolis.

Me too.

Me too.

Yeah.

And while it has the infrastructure to make it because they got the huge parking lots which is where they put these things for the most part.