American restaurant chain Chick-Fil-A has started providing food deliveries via drone.
The company announced the move in a social media post, which claimed that delivery hours would be between 10am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, and that there would be no cost for the service.
A Florida Chick-fil-A location in Valrico, Florida is exclusively offering drone deliveries to local customers, with a limited service area based on distance from the restaurant.
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Diners within a 1.2-mile radius of this location can now receive the drone deliveries, with hopes to expand this to a two-mile radius in the future.
Virginia tech firm DroneUp has partnered with the restaurant to enable the deliveries, with this company also helping Walmart provide drone deliveries last year.
“We are in the early stages of testing drone delivery at a small number of Chick-fil-A restaurants,” said Chelsea Lee, Chick-fil-A spokesperson, to The Tampa Bay Times.
The drone option can be selected through the restaurant’s associated app, with team members loading deliveries into boxes and attaching them to drones. Cables then drop the order to the ground near the customer.
Chick-fil-A has reportedly been trialling autonomous deliveries since May 2022, with the drone service being tested at locations across the US by various restaurant chains.
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