Uber Eats to test flying food to customers by drone

Flying fast food to customers within eight minutes of placing an order sounds like a wacky idea but that’s exactly what Uber Eats is planning to do next.

In future your dinner could fly to your neighbourhood, land on a car, and be driven to your door within just eight minutes of placing an order.

This is the latest wacky idea to emerge from Uber’s Elevate Summit in Washington DC today, where the company announced plans to launch home drone deliveries in the next two months.

But flying fast food might take some time to reach Australia, as Uber’s aviation team has only discussed flying cars with the country’s airspace regulators so far.

Uber Eats business development senior director Liz Meyerdirk unveiled the new scheme in the US, revealing the company would launch its first commercial drone delivery service in San Diego after completing a pilot last month.

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Uber Eats will test the flying food service in San Diego. Picture: Uber

“We’re working in partnership with Uber Elevate and McDonald’s, our first partner in testing drone delivery,” she said.

Under the scheme, customers will place an order with McDonald’s in the Uber Eats app, have the food packaged into a customised drone-friendly box, and flown to an Uber Eats delivery driver where it could land on a banner printed with a QR code.

Uber Elevate flight operations head Luke Fisher said the company was keen to test whether the drones could land on the car roofs of delivery drivers to allow the service in cities and busy suburbs.

“Whether we talk about landing on mailboxes, dropping items with parachutes attached, or in people’s backyards, we run into the same problem. This simply doesn’t work in dense urban environments,” he said.

“But then we had this key insight: we don’t need to get the drone to our customers’ door. We just have to get it close enough.”

Food will be delivered within just eight minutes of placing an order. Picture: Uber

Mr Fisher said delivery drones would allow restaurants to reach customers outside their usual delivery zones, and would also increase the number of restaurants available to Uber Eats users.

Drone travel could also increase the speed of food deliveries, he said.

The ride-sharing company worked with America’s Federal Aviation Authority on regulations on the new drone project, but Uber aviation public policy head Kate Fraser told News Corp Australia that it could be some time before the scheme flew into Australia.

“We have not looked at any other country at this time,” she said.

“There’s always the possibility with our Uber Air initiative that we would look at drones as well but that has not been discussed at this time.”

Australia’s airspace authority has a history of working with commercial drone operators to deliver food, however.

Google used Canberra as the launch site for its Wing drone delivery project which, after three years of trials and testing, can deliver products from pharmacies, coffee shops, and restaurants to locals.

CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said Google could now operate up to 15 drones at once, proving the regulator had “a good track record” supporting innovative services.