San Francisco Bay Area residents who want food, groceries or other small items sent to their homes will soon have another option: drone delivery.
Wing, a California startup owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, said it is expanding its service to that area in the coming months. The company’s yellow-and-white drones can deliver small packages in under 30 minutes. Its fastest delivery time has been under three minutes.
“Customers can get their last-minute ingredients, small household items, and meals without sitting in traffic,” the company said in an announcement on Monday.
Teaming up with retailers such as Walmart and the delivery platform DoorDash, Wing started offering its service in cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston. But the company also plans to expand delivery to other major areas including Los Angeles, Miami and more.
Wing has completed more than 750,000 deliveries to homes. Its service area covers more than 2 million customers.
Customers access drone delivery through the Wing app or its partners, such as Walmart and DoorDash. Wing didn’t say i which retailers or partners will be involved in the Bay Area expansion or what neighborhoods it will serve.
The company’s service expansion in the Bay Area is the latest example of how tech companies and retailers are competing head-to-head to speed up delivery and rope in more customers.
Earlier this year, Wing said it planned to bring drone delivery to more than 40 million Americans. Working with Walmart, the company said it plans to establish a network of more than 270 drone delivery locations in 2027, which includes Los Angeles.
Walmart offers drone delivery for free for a limited time to members of its subscription service or $19.99 per delivery for nonmembers.
Last week, Amazon said it would start providing one-hour deliveries to parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It’s also been experimenting with drone delivery for packages up to five pounds.
Wing started in 2012 in Google’s moonshot factory, whose ambitious projects have included self-driving cars, smartglasses and stratospheric balloons to beam internet. Wing then emerged as an independent Alphabet business in 2018, according to its website.
The company started piloting drone delivery at Google’s Mountain View campus to deliver supplies.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
