Drone food delivery is coming to the Northeast for the first time by way of Grubhub.
Food delivery app Grubhub, food hall platform Wonder, and drone delivery company Dexa have teamed up to announce a three-month drone delivery pilot in New Jersey. It’s set to begin on March 18, marking the first drone food delivery program in the Northeast. That’s a region that has largely sat out the drone delivery expansion playing out across what has mostly been Texas (aka the Drone Star State) and suburban markets over the past few years.
The new food delivery trial helmed around Grubhub’s delivery network uses a drone called the Dexa’s DE-2020. This delivery-specific drone is unique in that it was both designed and assembled within the U.S. That domestic manufacturing angle is worth noting especially now that supply chain scrutiny has become an increasingly serious issue for commercial drone operators. Being able to point to U.S.-made hardware matters more than it used to (and future drones made outside the U.S. may not even be legal going forward anyway given the FCC drone ban).
Dexa, which is led by CEO Beth Flippo, also holds FAA Part 135 Air Carrier certification and has received FAA approval to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) in dense metro areas. That second piece is also intriguing, given how many drone delivery operators are still confined to suburban or exurban corridors where airspace management is more straightforward. Dense, urban New Jersey is a much harder environment, which is part of what makes this test interesting.
Customers who order through the program won’t pay additional delivery fees, and the pitch is the same one the broader drone delivery industry has been making for years: food arrives faster and fresher than a car-based delivery can manage. No word yet on the specific service area within the state.
Drone food delivery has been slowly but steadily expanding across the U.S. Wing launched drone delivery in Houston in January, adding it to an existing footprint in Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta. Walmart and Wing have announced plans to expand to 150 additional store locations over the next year. Flytrex and Wing have also been pushing into new markets, and Wing has been active in Dallas-area shopping destinations as well. Even Silicon Valley has gotten in on the action — the Bay Area saw its own drone delivery expansion in late 2024.
Still, little activity has occurred in this part of the U.S.. The Northeast’s density, complex airspace, and older infrastructure have made it a tougher nut to crack. Whether Dexa can make it work — in partnership with two recognizable consumer brands — is exactly what the next three months are designed to find out.
Beyond this pilot, Dexa says it’s expanding a Partnership Program aimed at restaurants, grocery retailers, and enterprise operators looking to build toward autonomous delivery at scale. A 2024 study found drone delivery is genuinely useful for consumers in the right contexts, lending some data-backed momentum to that pitch.
I’ve personally experienced drone delivery firsthand — getting a Powerade delivered by a Wing drone on a hot Texas day — and the experience was fun and fast. I wish I could get it at my own home in San Francisco.
New Jersey might be the place that starts making drone delivery more common in denser urban areas like where I live.
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