Walmart plans to bring delivery drones to Philly. What that means for Amazon and the same-day delivery wars.
The move, according to industry observers, would intensify the competition with Amazon, which has been feverishly working to offer increasingly faster deliveries to consumers via humans and drones.
Walmart is raising the stakes in the high-speed delivery war with Amazon, with part of this latest battle playing out in Philadelphia.
Wing, the first company to offer commercial drone delivery to homes in the United States, announced this week that it will expand its partnership with Walmart to bring drone service to seven new cities, including the City of Brotherly Love, sometime in 2027.
A Walmart spokesperson said there was no timeline for when the drones would come online in Philadelphia, nor did the company say which of the city’s five stores would get the service. Even so, Philadelphia’s inclusion in Walmart’s drone program would be the first for the Northeast, part of a plan to bring drone delivery to 270 stores.
“Expanding into new markets with Wing allows us to provide an innovative delivery option for customers, utilizing our vast store network to make everyday shopping and fulfilling last-minute needs just a little bit easier,” said Greg Cathey, Walmart’s senior vice president of eCommerce fulfillment transformation in the U.S, in a statement.
The move, according to industry observers, would intensify the competition with Amazon, which has been feverishly working to offer increasingly faster deliveries to consumers through a mix of human couriers and drones. While Amazon has been testing out drone delivery since 2016, the competition lies not in who has the better machines, but in who can deliver goods faster.
Walmart, which launched its pilot that began in 2021, has used Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth as a testing grounds for its drones.
Just last month, the e-commerce giant launched “Amazon Now,” a 30-minute-or-less (human) delivery service in Philadelphia, also available in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Seattle.
Early Walmart reports tout an average delivery time of 23 minutes with their drones.
“I think [the drone expansion] is signaling that Walmart feels that they are ready to reduce the delivery time,” said Subodha Kumar, founding director of the Center for Business Analytics and Disruptive Technologies at Temple University’s Fox School of Business.
“They are going to put a lot of pressure on Amazon.”
While Amazon is seen as the gold standard for e-commerce logistics and had a head start experimenting with drones, its under-60-minute delivery through “Prime Air” has been primarily deployed in suburban areas. Part of the challenge for Amazon is that its fulfillment centers are far from customers.
Walmart has the advantage of being much closer to its customers, said Kumar, calling plans to introduce drones a significant development in the wars for faster deliveries.
“For Walmart, the drone makes even more sense because drones are limited in their distance and what they can carry,” said Kumar, adding the retailer has the advantage of having its stores much closer to their customers.
For its part, Walmart has billed the machines as a fast way to get last-minute items. The Wing drones will deliver up to eight miles from a location that offers the service and carry up to 2.1 pounds, according to the company’s website.
The company has said some of the most popular items for this kind of delivery include medicine, fruit, eggs, ice cream, baby formula, and pet food.
People can place orders on the Walmart app and their delivery will be lowered on a tether in front of their home, driveway, or backyard. Deliveries will be free for a limited time to Walmart+ members, according to the company website, or $19.99 for nonmembers.
“Our work with Walmart has shown that drone delivery isn’t just a novelty, it’s a service many customers count on multiple times per week,” said Heather Rivera, Wing’s chief business officer, in a statement.
The pilot, which Walmart says works with “drone providers” that are experts in their field, made its millionth delivery last month with an average delivery time of 23 minutes going at speeds up to 60 miles an hour.
Drones are currently carrying out deliveries in select cities in Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia. In addition to Philadelphia, Memphis, New Orleans, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area are part of the expansion.
Kumar said the new technology demonstrates there’s an appetite for faster deliveries on the consumer side and a service with no human interaction.
In that way, the drones are similar to Uber Eats’ autonomous delivery bots, which were introduced in March to a mixed response. While many appreciate the convenience, others have lamented the sight of cuboids blocking the sidewalks. Lawmakers have already expressed concerns over the technology moving too fast and suggested restrictions. Waymo, the autonomous vehicles, have spurred similar conversations in Philadelphia.
In its expansion announcement, Wing said both companies plan to work closely with local leaders and community members, sharing information about the machines.
Kumar said the drones will likely bring a whole new set of public concerns over airspace traffic and safety.
“It will bring new issues that we don’t know the answers to yet,” he said.
