At the time, the Flytrex was playing up that Part 135, unlike Part 107 certification, includes the ability to fly over people and beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight. So what exactly is the difference? We caught up with Flytrex’s CEO Yariv Bash for more insights.

“Although first approvals to operate drone deliveries Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) under Part 135 were already granted earlier this year, it was still required to use Visual Observers (VOs) to watch the skies and detect other manned aircraft. This stifled expansion, as the number of required VOs grows exponentially (and expensively) with extended delivery range. With this latest approval, the FAA allows us to operate BVLOS without human VOs and instead using a technological solution to surveil the skies – a pivotal breakthrough that is far more labor, and cost, efficient.

Operating BVLOS without VOs was the last major regulatory barrier that previously hindered profitable drone delivery on a large scale. With this milestone achieved, we can now strategically navigate Flytrex’s expansion, propelled by our own advancements and momentum towards operational profitability.”

In essence, the previous certification allows a company to fly drones out of an operator’s line of sight, and means one operator can fly multiple drones. But a visual observer is still needed to check the sky for other airborne vehicles, so if anything is detected the drones can be told to avoid potential collision. Given that doubling delivery range effectively means quadrupling the area you need to observe, those labor costs scale quickly — Flytrex thinks these new savings will put it on track towards profitability.

Competitive Assessment Updates

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Founded by a team of engineers associated with Yale, NASA JPL, and Anduril, the startup aims to build end-to-end automation for drone delivery. The company’s current focus is on food delivery, as evinced by its recent trial in Mesa, Arizona - near Phoenix. Restaurants served include Nektar Juice Bar, MAD Greens, Tokyo Joe’s, and Popadelics. Customers were able to order for a $3 delivery fee, with delivery times averaging four minutes.

Speaking to their choice of pilot location and restaurant partners, COO Cat Orman shared “Restaurant partners are always looking for innovative ways to best serve their customers and stakeholders like the Mesa City Council have a strong interest in autonomy + affordable, sustainable, delivery infrastructure so it became a natural conversation once a location was determined.” The company has more pilots set for the near future, including one in Las Vegas’ Innovation District.

Prior to certification, Flytrex operated in five markets - four in North Carolina and one in Texas - and delivered for brands that include Starbucks, Brinker International, Unilever and Taco Bell. With this coveted certification in hand, OttOmate sat down with Flytrex CEO & Co-Founder Yariv Bash for an exclusive interview, to discuss what comes next for the high-flying startup.

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The News

• Google Wing announced today that it is launching its drone delivery service on April 7 in the city of Frisco and the town of Little Elm, both of which are in the Dallas Fort-Worth (DFW) area of Texas.

• Wing’s drones will be staged at a Walgreens, and will deliver items from that store as well as ice cream from Blue Bell Creameries. The service will be available by invite only at first, before expanding to more customers.

• The news comes less than a week after Flytrex officially launched its drone delivery service in Grandbury, also in the DFW area. Which Texas towns will want in on that sweet drone action next?

The Story

When it rains, it pours in the drone delivery world. This is the third big drone delivery news we’ve covered over the past week here at OttOmate. Flytrex announced its expansion into the DFW area last week. Over in Ireland, Manna is launching its second service area in the skies over Balbriggan. And now Wing is flying high over Frisco and Little Elm.

Drone delivery, is just getting warmed up.

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The News

• Manna, the Dublin, Ireland-based drone delivery service, will launch its commercial service in the skies over Balbriggan, a suburb of Dublin, this week. (First reported by The Sunday Times)

• The official launch comes after following a test run in Balbriggan that began last November.

• According to The Times, Manna is prepping to do 200 flights a day, twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

The Story

In no way, shape or form are drone food deliveries now mainstream. But! We are seeing drone deliveries pop up and expand to more places than ever, and Manna is one of the companies leading the charge.

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The News

• Flytrex announced today the availability of its drone delivery service to Grandbury, Texas, a suburb of Dallas Forth-Worth (DFW).

• This is the first big U.S. expansion for Flytrex, which has been operating in three cities in North Carolina as well as a pilot in Orange County, California.

• As part of this launch, Flytrex is broadening its relationship with Brinker International (Chili’s, Maggiano’s, Just Wings), with deliveries available starting today.

The Story

If you want your burritos delivered by air in just a few minutes, then, uhh, move to DFW. Not only is Flytrex expanding its drone delivery there as of today, but Google Wing has said it will be launching there as well.

(Sidenote to all autonomous delivery startups — there are other cities in the U.S. besides Dallas.😁)

After dropping off more than 12,000 items in North Carolina last year (with the fastest delivery taking just 1:42 minutes), Flytrex has now set its sites on Texas. And if past is prologue, once Dallas is up and running, drone delivery to other cities in the Lone Star State are sure to follow quickly.

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The News

• FoodPanda will conduct a drone meal delivery pilot between the Singapore islands of Sentosa and St. John’s next month. (Tip of the hat to ZDNet)

• This test is being conducted through a partnership between FoodPanda, Sentosa Development Corporation and Singapore Technologies Engineering.

• This inter-island delivery illustrates how drones can expand food delivery to different parts of the world.

The Story

When we talk about the advantages of drone food delivery, it’s often around the fast nature of drone delivery (minutes!), and its more eco-friendly approach to getting people their meals (you don’t need a two-ton car to drop off two tacos).

But another aspect of drone delivery is its ability to go places where traditional deliver drivers — or even newfangled delivery robots — cannot.

Case in point: FoodPanda flying over water to make inter-island deliveries in Singapore.

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Listen, I’m normally averse to publishing company stats. So it’s with a little trepidation that I post this infographic showcasing Flytrex’s 2021 drone delivery highlights… that Flytrex sent to me.

Ugh.

The reason I’m making an exception is that drone food delivery is a very new, not even fully formed industry yet. While these stats are self-serving, they also serve as a window into how early adopters are using the service. Of course, this data is from a very limited sample size. Throughout 2021, Flytrex mainly operated out of one city in North Carolina, though it has since expanded to three cities in that state, as well as a pilot with El Pollo Loco Orange County, California.

Regardless, getting your food delivered in 1.42 minutes is—really, really fast.

For more on the nascent drone delivery industry, check out the OttOmate Market Guide to Drone Food Delivery Startups.

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The News

• DroneDek makes a smart receptacle to autonomously accept drone deliveries of meals, groceries and other goods. (They even sport a nifty 911 assistance feature!)

• The company plans to install 4,000 of its delivery systems in Lawrence, Indiana over the next two years, with the first 220 arriving at DroneDek this week.

• Patent disputes could complicate DroneDek’s future, however. “[There is] probably some litigation off in the future,” DroneDek Chairman and CEO Dan O’Toole told OttOmate last week.

The Story

No matter where they are or what technology they use, all drone delivery services have one thing in common — they have to drop their cargo off somewhere. And it’s likely that somewhere will be a specialized smart locker for many residences and offices. That’s where DroneDek comes in.

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The News

• Zing, a Florida-based drone delivery service, has found a path to market while it still navigates the strict process of getting full FAA approval. The company currently operates under part 107 of the FAA commercial drone operation code, which means it can’t fly over people or moving vehicles.

• Zing has found an interesting… “loophole” is probably too perjorative a term, but it has found a path to market that allows it to remain compliant with the FAA while still launching a pilot operation.

• The company will make deliveries by flying over waterways in places like St. Petersburg, Florida. Zing will fly orders from waterfront restaurants over over the water to a designated area in a neighborhood on the opposite bank.

Why This is Interesting

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When I spoke with Flytrex CEO Yariv Bash about his company’s drone delivery program earlier this week, he was effusive in his praise of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It’s a bit odd to hear a private company praise a government agency as much as Bash did, but he was adamant the FAA is leaps ahead of other civil aviation authorities around the world.

Of course Flytrex — and any other new drone delivery startup in the U.S. — literally needs FAA approval to conduct business, so it behooves anyone in the drone business to connect and play nice with the agency as soon as possible.

It’s been awhile since I checked in on the state of drone delivery regulation in the U.S., so I reached out to the FAA to find out more. They preferred emailed questions over an in-person interview, so the following is a lightly edited written exchange between OttOmate and an FAA spokesperson.

How fully developed are federal regulations around this emerging drone food delivery market? 

Visual line-of-sight drone deliveries are currently allowed under Part 107, provided the drone and its cargo weigh less than 55 pounds. The operator, which must be a remote pilot, must see the drone at all times and cannot fly it across state lines. The FAA has certificated some drone-delivery operators as air carriers using Part 119, which allows for more complex operations under Part 135. The FAA will use data gathered from current operations to further integrate drone delivery operations into the National Airspace System. 

In November 2020, the FAA announced the publication of airworthiness criteria for the proposed certification of 10 different drones as special-class aircraft. This is an important step toward more complex drone operations beyond what currently is allowed under Part 107, including package delivery.  

The FAA’s goal is to move from individual approvals to the predictability of operating by rule, especially for vital activities such as infrastructure inspection, public safety, and package delivery. To address this challenge, the FAA announced an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line-of-Sight Operations (BVLOS) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) on June 8, 2021. The objective of the ARC is to provide the FAA with recommendations for performance-based regulations to normalize safe,   scalable, economically viable and environmentally advantageous BVLOS operations that are not under air traffic control.

You can find more information on drone deliveries on the FAA website. 

How many drone delivery companies are currently working with the FAA? What have you learned from your pilot programs so far?

The FAA launched the UAS Partnership for Safety Plan (PSP) Program in December 2016 to address and advance complex unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operational capabilities. The PSP provides an arrangement to share mutually beneficial information, while building trust, leadership, and teamwork through a public-private relationship. Current PSP partners include Amazon Prime Air, UPS Flight Forward, and Wing. Through the UAS Integration Pilot Program and the BEYOND Program, the FAA has worked with other drone delivery companies through the state, local, and tribal governments that serve as the lead participants of these programs. 

What are some factors/complications about air delivery that drone delivery startups might not be aware of as they start out? 

Drone delivery is considered a complex operation. While some types of visual line-of-sight drone delivery operations can be conducted under Part 107, as discussed above, Part 135 certification is the only path for small drones deliver goods for compensation beyond visual line-of-sight. More information is available here. 

What has or will change from a regulatory perspective as more companies launch drone delivery services, sometimes multiple services in the same city?  

To meet industry and public demand, the FAA is following an integration strategy based on risk; that is, low-risk operations are integrated first, followed by increasingly complex and higher-risk operations. 

The lowest risk operations are recreational and commercial operations within visual line-of-sight (VLOS).  Commercial beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) and cargo operations are considered higher risk operations. 

Several years ago, the FAA adopted an “Operations First” approach to enable safe BVLOS and cargo operations in the near-term by allowing deviations from existing rules. 

While waivers and exemptions have enabled testing and the gathering of data to inform future decisions, it is labor intensive, time consuming, and cannot be scaled to meet the needs of the industry. 

Now that the Remote ID and operations over people and at night rules have been finalized, the FAA is turning its focus to enabling BVLOS operations without visual observers that are repeatable, scalable, and economically viable across rural, suburban, and urban environments. As mentioned above, the objective of the BVLOS ARC is to provide the FAA with recommendations for performance-based regulations to normalize safe, scalable, economically viable and environmentally advantageous BVLOS operations that are not under air traffic control. The recommendations produced by this committee may pave the way for routine drone package delivery. 

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Last week, we told you about A&K Courier Delivery Services, Nigeria’s first restaurant drone delivery service prepping to launch in January. This, A&K Founder Kingsley Mazi sent us a quick note to say that his company has officially signed partnerships with three restaurants in Nigeria.

The restaurants are:

• BigKitchen

• Onunu Boy

• D9 Shawarma

All three restaurants are headquartered in Port Harcourt, where A&K is also headquartered. Both BigKitchen and Onunu Boy are chain restaurants with locations in multiple states across Nigeria.

As we wrote previously, drone delivery services are popping up all over the world. Not only are drones more efficient than full-sized cars for carrying food items, but they are also more environmentally friendly, and can avoid existing infrastructure issues (Mazi started A&K in part because of the bad road networks in Nigeria).

Here in the U.S., we’ve seen drone delivery take off with Flytrex, which has been working closely with the FAA over the past four years, and is now making dozens drone deliveries a day in North Carolina. Flytrex anticipates it will get FAA clearance to operate across the U.S. in the first half of 2022.

For A&K, these restaurant partnerships are the first steps for Mazi to build “world class on-demand restaurant delivery services” in Nigeria.

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Drone delivery startup Flytrex has been on a bit of tear lately. The company now operates three delivery locations in North Carolina with Walmart and a number of restaurant brands like Chili’s. It recently conducted a pilot with El Pollo Loco in Orange County, California. And, oh yeah, it just raised $40 million a little over a week ago.

And as Flytrex CEO Yariv Bash explained to me this week, his company has no plans to slow down and is ramping things up next year. Flytrex expects to get FAA approval to operate nationally in the U.S. in the first half of 2022, and plans to be operating 70 delivery stations by 2023. I talked with Bash about working with the FAA, what Flytrex’s current drone deliveries look like, and how it serves people who don’t have their own house.

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There are plenty of reasons food delivery by drone makes a lot of sense. It’s faster, so food arrives piping hot. It keeps delivery cars off the road, reducing traffic congestion. And, well, it’s also very cool to get a burrito by air.

But for Kingsley Mazi, the roads themselves in his home country of Nigeria are a big reason he is looking to launch his drone food delivery service.

“We want to help restaurants deliver food because of the inefficiency, because of traffic and bad road networks,” Mazi told me during an interview this week, “Order a hot burger and it doesn't come to you in time.”

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Drone delivery startup Flytrex announced today that it has raised a $40 million Series C round of funding led by BRM Group with participation from OurCrowd, Lukasz Gadowski (Founder and Chairman at Delivery Hero) along with existing investors Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), btov, and BackBone Ventures. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Flytrex to $60 million.

Flytrex is emerging as a leader in the nascent drone delivery space here in the U.S. The company started piloting drone deliveries in Iceland back in 2017, but leveled up in September of 2020 when it started testing drone grocery deliveries for Walmart in Fayeteville, North Carolina. Flytrex recently launched its third drone delivery station in North Carolina and is delivering meals from restaurants like Just Wings, Chili’s and Maggiano’s from the Holly Springs Towne Center. The company also conducted drone delivery from El Pollo Loco in Orange County, California earlier this month.

The company said it will use its new funds to expand delivery across the U.S. and add more retail and QSR partners.

One interesting bit about today’s funding announcement is that OurCrowd, an equity crowdfunding platform, is an investor. Flytrex is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on OurCrowd where it’s looking to raise $3.9 million. Zippin also did this same investment+crowdfunding with OurCrowd earlier this year. We reached out to Flytrex to find out more detail about how the crowdfunding fits into this Series C, and will update when we hear back.

As part of that equity crowdfunding campaign, Flytrex shared some information about itself including:

• Revenue for fiscal year 2021 is $100,000

• It has signed deals with eight “national chains”

• Walmart will be expanding drone deliveries to 50 locations by end of year 2022

Additionally, from the Flytrex crowdfunding campaign:

Flytrex generates revenue through $5 delivery fees. Each drone delivery currently costs the company $12.57. As they expand geographically and reach a larger customer base, Flytrex projects the cost of each delivery to decline to $6.58 by 2023 and to only $1.14 by 2025. Achieving an economy of scale, Flytrex will generate a net profit of $3.86 per delivery. With these high profit margins, Flytrex reports that it expects to become profitable by 2024. After achieving profitability, their revenue is projected to increase dramatically. Flytrex currently has three operating stations located in the state of North Carolina. They are hoping to increase this number to 70 by 2023 and 484 by 2025

One of the reasons Flytrex is being so aggressive is that it has been working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration over the past three years. Tight restrictions around flight paths and air travel is a big hurdle for drone operators to overcome (around the world) before such deliveries can go mainstream.

According to today’s press announcement, “Flytrex participated in the Federal Aviation Administration’s UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP) which concluded in October 2020, and continued in the FAA’s subsequent initiative, BEYOND, to work with the North Carolina Department of Transportation to help tackle the remaining challenges of UAS integration.” The company expects to receive approval from the FAA to operate in the rest of the US by the end of Q1 2022.

Drones are steadily moving from flights of fancy to very real delivery options around the world. Earlier this week Manna said that it had expanded drone deliveries to a second city in Ireland.

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Manna has started its first drone delivery flights to the Irish city of Balbriggan, according to a Linkedin post with accompany video over the weekend from company CEO Bobby Healy. Balbriggan has a population of 35,000, is fifteen minutes from the Dublin airport, and would be the second city in Ireland to get Manna’s delivery service.

Manna’s drones fly between 50 and 80 meters (164 to 262 ft) above the ground at a speed of 80 km/hr (50 mph). When the drone reaches its destination — typically within three minutes — it hovers over designated area and drops a tether with the goods down to the recipient.

Healy’s post didn’t say if these were test flights or part of a full-on regular program, and the company’s website still lists Balbriggan service as “coming soon.” We reached out to the company and will update when we hear back.

Manna has been conducting drone deliveries in the Galway, Ireland since the tail end of last year. As of March this year, Manna was doing 50 - 100 drone deliveries per day, carrying grocery items from Tesco and restaurant meals from Camille Thai and for the Just Eat Takeaway delivery service.

Adding service to the town of Balbriggan brings drone delivery closer to Manna’s headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. The new city also means that Manna is operating on both coasts of the Emerald Isle.

In his Linkedin post, Healy noted that Balbriggan is fifteen minutes away from the Dublin airport. This is worth pointing out given that one complication standing in the way of mainstream drone delivery adoption is dealing with regulatory bodies around flight paths and air traffic. When I spoke with Healy at the ArticulATE conference in May of this year, he said he was working with aviation authorities to allow delivery flights to happen beyond line-of-site restrictions.

Having said all that, we’ve seen plenty of drone delivery programs taking off (pardon the pun) here in the U.S. over the past year. Israeli drone delivery company Flytrex is working with Walmart and a number Brinker International brand restaurants in North Carolina. And over in Centerville, Ohio, Kroger started piloting (pardon the second pun) drone grocery delivery in May of this year.

In addition to adding a second city, we’ve also seen Manna pushing drone delivery technology forward in other ways. Last month Healy posted a different video showing a robotic arm autonomously swapping out battery packs on drones. Turning battery swapping over to robots could keep drones in the sky longer, allowing them to make more deliveries and generate, appropriate enough for an Irish company, more green.

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At first, we covered robots robots performing single tasks — carry this burrito from point A to point B, for instance. But a trend we’re starting to see take shape is automation extending further up the workflow stack. Take for instance this video Manna CEO Bobby Healy posted to Linkedin today showing a robot arm autonomously replacing a battery in a Manna delivery drone.

Substack doesn’t let me embed Linkedin posts, so you can see the screenshot below, and here’s the text:

In order to get the levels of volume testing we need, we use autonomous robots to do the battery swaps. This way we can fly 24x7 to test for mechanical issues across all weather conditions.

Having a fast autonomous turnaround is part of enabling low-cost, high-speed and safe operations for the future.

Thanks to the team VIKASO® | Robotics 4.0 for your hard work on this.

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We’ve been seeing more of this type of end-to-end robotics delivery chain lately. Over in Istanbul, Turkey, Speedy Market has built an autonomous retail store that loads self-driving robots that make deliveries in high-rise residential buildings. And just last week we saw that StoreXapp, which makes autonomous retail towers load up Kiwibot delivery robots to make snack and drink deliveries on the campus of Loyola Marymount University.

Though robotic delivery is not anywhere near mainstream yet, startups are already working on daisy chaining together various autonomous pieces of the delivery puzzle. Which is good! Part of the appeal with autonomous delivery is that it is, well, autonomous — that it doesn’t require a whole lot of human intervention.

Over in South Korea, Woowa Brothers is working with companies like Hyundai and HDC I-Controls so Woowa food delivery robots can access secure buildings and autonomously ride elevators. This means a robot could carry food from a restaurant directly to an apartment’s front door.

Here in the U.S., Valqari is building out automated landing pads/smart lockers for commercial and residential drone deliveries. And much further down the road, Piestro already has an agreement with Kiwibot that will have delivery robots able to pick up pizzas directly from smart pizza vending machines.

Manna’s battery-swapping robots are a little different, but it just extends the automation in the opposite direction. Instead of sliding automation closer to the consumer, it pushes it closer to the business side and point of origin.

In other words, there will be more business opportunities to automate the nooks and crannies all along the path between the restaurant and customer.

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Valqari announced today that it was granted a new patent (no. 11,117,680) for its drone delivery station from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). This is the third U.S. patent for Valqari, and the 28th patent issued across the globe to the company.

Valqari makes landing stations that drones can land on and drop off their payload into a secure locker. Once secured, goods can be retrieved by the recipient or even a third party delivery person (think: DoorDash driver picking up a burrito and taking it the final mile) using a mobile app.

In a brief phone chat today, Valqari Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Walsh told me that Valqari’s three U.S. patents cover:

1. A window delivery station

2. A rotating wall that spins to reveal a landing platform for the drone

3. Standalone ground stations for drones to land on

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I’ve known about Valqari’s standalone ground stations for awhile, but the window functionality was news to me. In the patent application, Valqari said the window station can be affixed to a window like an air conditioning unit and could be used for apartment or condo buildings. For buildings that don’t want a lot of landing pads on their exterior, Valqari said one landing pad could be used by many different residents.

The patent filing also covers a broad range of features and applications such as solar powered charging and temperature controlled receptacles to ensure food deliveries are kept at proper temperatures.

Valqari’s ultimate vision is for everyone to have their own drone drop off box just as they have their own mailbox. Back in July, Walsh said that Valqari would launch its first single-family stations later this year (and that they’d cost $1,500). But during my chat with him today, he said those plans have been pushed back to Q1 of next year.

While still in its infancy, drone delivery is starting to gain momentum (albeit slowly) as a food delivery mechanism. In Galway, Ireland, Manna has been making thousands of delivery flights over the past year. Last year, Walmart piloted drone grocery delivery with Flytrex and this past June invested in DroneUp. Kroger even launched a groceries-by-drone-delivery pilot earlier this year in Ohio.

There are a lot of good reasons to use drones for food delivery. Drones are faster, with the ability to fly over traffic and delivery a latte piping hot in minutes. They are also more ecologically friendly than using a full-sized car to drop off tacos.

Having said all that, there are still safety regulations that need to be resolved as well a privacy concerns that need to be addressed (when I spoke with Manna’s CEO earlier this year, he said people were worried about drones spying on them). But those issues are being worked out and it won’t be that far off in the future when you may have your own drone delivery pad of your very own.

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