Walmart announced earlier this week that it launched a pilot program to provide grocery delivery by drone from a store in Fayetteville, NC. The nation’s largest retailer is now delivering select grocery and household items using Flytrex’s automated drones.
The pilot program comes one week after Amazon was granted approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate its fleet of Prime Air delivery drones. Amazon says it’s not ready to deploy package deliveries at scale, but is actively flying and testing the technology.
Walmart also announced recently that it is partnering with Instacart for home delivery in four markets across California and Oklahoma.
According to Walter Loeb from Forbes.com, “John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., had the correct strategic vision to add Instacart to his business mix and strengthen his competitive stance against Amazon. I am certain that in the next few months this platform will be expanded to the Midwest and then roll out to the east coast so that Walmart stores across the whole country will be serviced by Instacart by the end of next year.”