Original article (in Serbian) was published on 20/10/2023; Author: Ivan Subotić
Web portal NS Uzivo published yesterday the news titled “Ljubljana is the first city in the world where FOOD IS DELIVERED BY DRONE: Hot burek delivered to the mayor”. Although delivery of burek by drone indeed took place in the capital of Slovenia a little over a week ago, it cannot be said that Ljubljana is the first city in the world where food is delivered this way. This type of delivery has already been experimented with in several cities around the world, while in some cities food delivery by drones has been operating as a commercial service for some time.
The Slovenian media also described the delivery by drone in Ljubljana as pioneering, but only in the context of the product that was delivered, so they say that this is “the first delivery of burek by drone in the world”. The delivery lasted about one minute, it was carried out by the company OneDrone in cooperation with the restaurant Burek Olimpija, and everything was supported by the delivery company Volt.
Where in the world has food been delivered by drones?
There are many examples of cities where food is delivered or has been experimentally delivered by drones. In Reykjavik, Iceland, back in 2017, the delivery company Aha, in cooperation with the drone manufacturing company Flytrex, developed a food delivery system with the help of drones.
According to Chinese media, over the past year and a half, the Meituan shopping platform has made more than 184,000 food deliveries by drone. “It generally takes around 30 minutes for ground-based delivery people to deliver food within a three-kilometre radius, but it only takes 15 minutes for drones”, drone delivery platform boss Yang Junwei told the South China Morning Post.
The company Wing, which is part of Google’s parent company Alphabet, also deals with drone delivery, and among other things, it also provides food delivery services. According to information from the company’s website, it has made over 350,000 commercial deliveries by drone since 2018 and operates in three countries on three continents – the United States, Australia and Finland.