Drone food delivery service expanding in North Carolina
Drone delivery company Flytrex said it is expanding its drone delivery service to Holly Springs, North Carolina.
The company has already started delivering food via drone from local restaurant It's Just Wings.
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Flytrex said the effort was part of a partnership between Causey Aviation Unmanned, the Federal Aviation Administration, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, The Town of Holly Springs and Kite Realty Group Trust.
The drone company said it was delivering food from the town center of Holly Springs to both backyards and front yards in the Forest Springs neighborhood. The service is only for the dozens of households that opted into it.
Yariv Bash, CEO of Flytrex, said they were eager to demonstrate the benefits of drone delivery to residents and businesses in North Carolina.
"We are soaring into a new age in which smart cities harness the immense power of drones to maximize efficiency and feed consumers' growing appetite for on-demand deliveries -- all while reducing our carbon footprint," Bash said.
Through the Flytrex app, users can order food and track the status of their order. The food is lowered from a wire into the customer's back or front yards, and there are already plans to expand the service over the next few months.
Holly Springs Mayor Dick Sears said town residents were "excited" to see how the drone delivery service works and added that the people of the town "pride themselves on embracing new innovations." Holly Springs has about 25,000 residents.
Flytrex is part of one of the nine programs across the US chosen by the FAA to test out commercial drone usage in National Air Space.
North Carolina has been a hub for drone testing, particularly for those seeing whether drone deliveries of food and packages is viable.
Flytrex said Holly Springs has become the third location in North Carolina where they operate. In September 2020, they began conducting deliveries of groceries, household items and food in Fayetteville. They eventually expanded the deliveries into the town of Raeford, which is close to Fayetteville.
They have conducted thousands of deliveries and were approved by the FAA to expand their operation in North Carolina in April.