Discount giant Walmart is expanding its drone delivery service coast to coast, from Los Angeles to Miami, making it available to 150 additional stores over the next year.
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer and drone operator Wing on Sunday said they will be increasing the service's footprint to reach more than 40 million Americans, building out the largest U.S. residential drone delivery service.
Walmart's new drone service areas will include large metropolitan hubs such as Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Miami, with others to be announced later, according to Wing. That is on top of the service's previously slated expansion into Houston; Orlando and Tampa, Florida; and Charlotte, North Carolina. In fact, Wing and Walmart are slated to start operating the drone service in Houston this month.
In addition to launching the service to 150 more stores this year, Walmart and Wing plan to establish a network of over 270 drone delivery locations in 2027.
Walmart has been aggressively rolling out drone delivery of its orders to residences — touted as a quick and convenient option for shoppers — starting with regional tests in Dallas-Fort Worth in 2023 and then metropolitan Atlanta — and aiming to go national. The initiative, in part, is to make Walmart more competitive with e-commerce juggernaut Amazon in terms of quick delivery times.
Success in Dallas, Atlanta
"The question is no longer if Wing and Walmart will deliver to your city, it’s when," Wing, owned by Goggle's parent, Alphabet, said in a statement.
The trials in Dallas and Atlanta have been a success, according to Wing. The service's users have already made drone delivery a habit, with Wing’s top 25% of customers ordering three times a week.
The announcement was made the same morning that Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner, incoming CEO of Walmart Inc., and Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai appeared at a keynote session at the National Retail Federation conference in New York. They briefly discussed the growth of Walmart's drone service.
The 150-store drone expansion "takes us across the country," Furner said.
In the official announcement, Greg Cathey, senior vice president of digital fulfillment transformation at Walmart, said that drone delivery plays an important role the chain's ability to deliver what customers want, exactly when they want it.
"Whether it’s a last-minute ingredient for dinner, a must-have charger for a phone, or a late-night essential for a busy family, the strong adoption we’ve seen confirms that this is the future of convenience,” Cathey said in a statement. “By expanding drone delivery to new major metro areas, we are helping more customers solve for their last-minute needs faster than ever before.”
Walmart and Wing said they are working together to quickly enter and expand in new markets.
“We’ve spent years building our technology to ensure that when you realize you’re out of eggs or need over-the-counter medicine, the solution is just a few taps away, seamlessly integrated into existing store operations” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said in a statement.