DoorDash Tests Drone Delivery At Wendy's

Food delivery has really taken off in recent years—sometimes literally. DoorDash has announced that it's testing a new drone delivery partnership in a single U.S. test market, starting specifically with one fast food brand: Wendy's. If all goes well, maybe we'll all get our fries from the sky someday soon.

Christianburg, Virginia, a town of approximately 22,600, will be the first to experience DoorDash's foray into drone delivery. DoorDash has partnered with tech company Wing to work on the test run. None of this is new for Wing: The Google-owned company is one of Walmart's drone delivery partners, currently making customer drop-offs in the Dallas–Fort Worth area.

But the fine people of Christianburg won't be able to get just any fast food delivered this way just yet. The only food that will potentially arrive via drone service is from one single Wendy's location, and you'll only get your food that way if you select the drone delivery method at checkout within the DoorDash app. All Wendy's drone deliveries from that test site aim to be dropped off in 30 minutes or less.

DoorDash implemented drone delivery service in Australia in 2022, and the program has now expanded to three areas in Queensland. Over 60 merchants participate in this method of delivery there, which would indicate that under certain circumstances, taking to the skies is a viable option for shuttling food to customers.

"Expanding our partnership with DoorDash and launching in the U.S. is a direct result of the success we've seen from our initial collaboration in Australia, where Wing has served tens of thousands of customers via the DoorDash app for over a year now," said Cosimo Leipold, Head of Partnerships at Wing.

As a concept, the idea of having a drone drop-off something as innocuous as a late-night burger doesn't sound so bad, but one thing its proponents might not have considered is the potential noise pollution. Drones can be pretty nimble devices, but they do generate a lot of sound; in fact, there's been enough commotion to annoy some residents of an Australian suburb, as reported by A Current Affair.

One man in the segment likens the noise to a "swarm of mosquitoes," while another neighbor says, "[It's like] when you get a fly stuck in your room when you're trying to fall asleep."

There are, of course, fans of the delivery method, too—one resident being interviewed said he'd already received six drone orders that day alone. But if these machines have the capacity to divide the public, it'll be interesting to see how the Wendy's/DoorDash pilot program will fare here. Is that Dave's Double really worth the ire you'll face from your neighbors?