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The CEO of Walmart's drone partner says shoppers are ordering eggs to test the technology's handling

5 June 2025 at 20:01
A Wing drone carrying a Walmart delivery.
Wing's drones have a payload of five pounds, which means they can carry about half of the 120,000 items typically found at a Walmart Supercenter.

Wing

  • Millions of US households will soon be able to try drone delivery as Walmart and Wing expand access.
  • The service is coming to 100 more stores across several Southeast metro areas.
  • Wing says thousands of customers use the service each week to purchase items they need fast.

Baby wipes and eggs.

Those are two of the top products Wing CEO Adam Woodworth says Walmart shoppers commonly order using his company's drone delivery service.

"The baby wipes one makes total sense to me," he told Business Insider. "It's a problem when you run out."

The reason for eggs' popularity was less obvious to him until he realized customers were most likely testing the technology's handling.

"If you can get eggs delivered and they show up and they're not cracked, you can get pretty much anything delivered," Woodworth said.

Millions more households will soon be able to try drone delivery, as Walmart and Wing announce their largest expansion yet.

The companies said Thursday that they are bringing the service to 100 more US stores across metro areas, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa. They're also expanding in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, where the tech has been live for the past year and a half.

Woodworth said drone delivery is proving popular in the areas where it is widely available. Thousands of customers are turning to the service each week to purchase everyday items like groceries or household supplies.

"You're cooking dinner and you realize that the recipe called for scallions and you forgot to get them at the store," he said. (Walmart CEO Doug McMillon previously said he used the service to order last-minute cooking wine for dinner without leaving the couch.)

Wing's drones have a payload of five pounds, which means they can carry about half of the 120,000 items typically found at a Walmart Supercenter. In other words, not a gallon of milk, which weighs eight pounds, but a quart to get you through the morning rush.

Wing said the average delivery time is under 19 minutes. Woodworth said the company wants to get that down to 15.

"Something where it would be way faster to get it delivered than to jump in your car and go drive to the store," he said.

(For the parents waiting on baby wipes, that's about two episodes of "Bluey.")

Americans have harbored their suspicions about delivery drones zipping around overhead (some have even shot at them, which is a felony). Woodworth said Wing does demos to get communities more comfortable with the idea.

"The immediate reaction is that negative one," he said. "But over time, the questions go from the negative to 'Okay, well, when is it going to come to my house?'"

Read the original article on Business Insider

Grocery platform Misfits Market acquires The Rounds to further its mission of reducing food waste

30 May 2025 at 12:00
Misfits Market, the online platform that delivers imperfect groceries to help minimize waste, announced the acquisition of household restocking service The Rounds on Friday. As a result of the deal, Misfits Market plans to take on over 250 items from The Rounds’ inventory. This allows the company to diversify into additional categories, such as household […]

Don’t call it a drone: Zipline’s uncrewed aircraft wants to reinvent retail

8 April 2025 at 13:00

The skies around Dallas are about to get a lot more interesting. No, DFW airport isn't planning any more expansions, nor does American Airlines have any more retro liveries to debut. This will be something different, something liable to make all the excitement around the supposed New Jersey drones look a bit quaint.

Zipline is launching its airborne delivery service for real, rolling it out in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Mesquite ahead of a gradual spread that, if all goes according to plan, will also see its craft landing in Seattle before the end of the year. These automated drones can be loaded in seconds, carry small packages for miles, and deposit them with pinpoint accuracy at the end of a retractable tether.

It looks and sounds like the future, but this launch has been a decade in the making. Zipline has already flown more than 1.4 million deliveries and covered over 100 million miles, yet it feels like things are just getting started.

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Β© Tim Stevens

Dustland Delivery plays like a funny, tough, post-apocalyptic Oregon Trail

5 April 2025 at 11:30

Road trips with just two people always have their awkward silences. InΒ Dustland Delivery, my character, a sharpshooter, has tried to break the ice with the blacksmith he hired a few towns back, with only intermittent success.

Remember that bodyguard, the one I unsuccessfully tried to flirt with at that bar? The blacksmith was uninterested. What about that wily junk dealer, or the creepy cemetery? Silence. She only wanted to discuss "Abandoned train" and "Abandoned factory," even though, in this post-apocalypse, abandonment was not that rare. But I made a note to look out for any rusted remains; stress and mood are far trickier to fix than hunger and thirst.

Dustland Delivery release trailer.

Dustland Delivery, available through Steam for Windows (and Proton/Steam Deck), puts you in the role typically taken up by NPCs in other post-apocalyptic RPGs. You're a trader, buying cheap goods in one place to sell at a profit elsewhere, and working the costs of fuel, maintenance, and raider attacks into your margins. You're in charge of everything on your trip: how fast you drive, when to rest and set up camp, whether to approach that caravan of pickups or give them a wide berth.

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Β© Lilith Games

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