Wing Teams With Walgreens For Drone Deliveries In Dallas-Fort Worth

Alphabet's Wing has teamed up with Walgreens to bring drone-based goods delivery to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The new offering will involve a small drone fleet that'll be established in the store's parking lot, enabling its customers to place an order online, which is then packed into a small container, attached to a drone, and sent to the customer's location.

Wing envisions a unique future of online commerce, one that would allow customers to get items relatively quickly in unique locations where typical deliveries aren't possible. The company gives some examples of this idea in its promotional video, including one situation in which a person becomes injured on a hike, orders a first aid kit while on the trail, and waits for it to be delivered by drone.

Walgreens will be the first retailer in the US to use one of these small drone fleets for product delivery to local customers. One Walgreens store in the Dallas-Forth Worth area will offer this service with coverage over parts of Frisco and Little Elm. Beyond that, Wing is also working with Hillwood to establish a drone delivery facility at the local Frisco Station.

This marks a big expansion of Wing's drone-based delivery options, which have thus far been limited to smaller regions in the US. In comparison, the Dallas-Fort Worth area has a dense, large population, helping pave the way for similar rollouts in other bigger cities and metro regions.

Wing says that it has been testing its drone flights since this past June in Hillwood, doing so in anticipation of this Walgreens partnership. Residents located in Little Elm and Frisco may notice some of these drones in the sky starting next week when Wing will kick off a series of practice flights. The larger Walgreens commercial service, meanwhile, is set to arrive "in the coming months."