A Midwestern grocery chain plans to take its delivery service to the next level — quite literally.
Kroger is headed to the skies with its pilot (pilotless?) drone delivery program, which will be available to customers in two Ohio cities, Cincinnati and Monroe. Customers who opt for drone delivery will be able to order goods on their smartphones and have them delivered anywhere in the city.
Forgot the cheddar for the cheeseburgers? Get some flown to your deck. Run out of sunscreen at the lake? Kroger’s flying robots will hook you up. Your mother-in-law’s cooking lacks some flavor? Call in an aerial shipment of salt. Your order will arrive within 15 minutes or less.
The possibilities are “endless,” said Beth Flippo, the chief technology officer for the company developing Kroger’s drones, TELEGRID.
“Autonomous drones have unlimited potential to improve everyday life, and our technology opens the way to safe, secure, environmentally friendly deliveries for Kroger customers,” she explained.
There is one catch, though: Customers will need to limit their orders to 5 pounds or less. Kroger said it is in the process of designing bundled product offerings that will fit this weight limit and cover a variety of everyday needs. The goal is to make the program as accessible as possible, the grocery chain said.
But placing the orders will be the easy part. Delivering them on time is where it gets tricky.
The problem with drone deliveries is that there’s no designated landing zone for the drones when they arrive to drop off goods. They can’t open mailboxes, porches are often covered, and backyards are high-risk zones thanks to the family dog. Parachute deliveries won’t work well either. One gust of wind and that carton of eggs you ordered might just end up scrambled on your driveway.
Still, the demand for an on-demand, contactless delivery program is there, especially now that people increasingly see their neighbors as simply “vectors.” Walmart, Amazon, UPS Inc., and Alphabet’s Wing all have their own drones (though Walmart’s hasn’t been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration yet and Amazon is still figuring out how to crack the landing problem). And if Kroger’s test run goes well in Cincinnati and Monroe, the program might become available in other cities as well.
Things, you could say, are looking up.
