Chicken wing gets literal with KFC drone delivery pilot
On-demand delivery drone company Wing continues to expand its pilot in southeast Queensland, announcing it has teamed up with KFC to run a trial where its drones will be used to deliver for free a range of Kentucky Fried Chicken menu items to customers in the area.
According to the Alphabet-owned subsidiary, the drone delivery pilot will be available to a "small number" of households in Kingstone, Logan Central, Slacks Creek, Underwood, and Woodridge, with plans to gradually expand to include other nearby locations.
Participating customers craving a KFC Zinger burger or some salty chips will be able to put through their orders on the Wing delivery app, downloadable from the App Store or Google Play.
Once an order is submitted, the drone will fly to pick up the feed at the Wing delivery site where a purpose-built KFC kitchen prepares all orders. When the order is picked up, the drone will fly to the designated delivery destination.
On arrival at its destination, the drone will slow down, hover, and descend to a delivery height of about seven metres above ground, lower the package on a tether, and automatically release the package in the desired delivery area. The drone will not land nor require any assistance to unclip the package.
"We're excited to be teaming up with KFC, to expand their delivery options for customers by taking its customer favourites to new heights, through the skies of Logan, Queensland -- the drone delivery capital of the world," Wing Queensland city manager Dave Ojiako-Pettit said.
This latest pilot is off the back of a trial the Alphabet-owned company ran with Australian retail property group Vicinity Centres where it offered drone delivery for goods purchased from participating businesses at Grand Plaza in Logan.
Last August, Wing announced it surpassed 100,000 customer deliveries in Logan. Those deliveries included 10,000 cups of coffee, 1,700 children's snack packs, 1,200 roast chickens, 2,700 sushi rolls, and 1,000 loaves of bread, Wing said.
"We've seen a significant increase in use of our on-demand drone delivery service in southeast Queensland ... with many customers finding on-demand drone delivery especially useful as they stayed home, and relied on our contactless service to deliver the things they needed," Ojiako-Pettit said.