Drone delivery hits pizza and Vegas

Back on the December 1, 2013 episode of 60 Minutes, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke about how the company plans to continue servicing its 225 million customers around the world. The business has the goal of selling everything to everyone and during the conversation, Bezos touched on many topics, but it was the final moments that caused the logistics and delivery service industry to lift its head up and take notice.

The segment ended with Bezos unveiling the octocopter, which would be used for drone delivery of packages. He laid out a future where same-day delivery in urban areas can happen within 30 minutes. Workers at process facilities would handle any order, place it in the drone, program the delivery site and send it on its way.

While Bezos said it would be 2015 at the earliest before this kind of delivery service would be approved by the FAA, the company is actively researching and developing the service. Since then, a number of companies have teased their own versions of drone delivery, showing that more organizations see the potential in this kind of solution.

Currently, the company continues to push forward with the plan and is hiring software engineers, communications professional and interns to make the project a reality. The roles are for "Amazon Prime Air." 

Recently, several organizations have rolled out versions of it.

Pizza delivery

The idea of 30 minutes or less is synonymous with pizza delivery. It makes sense, then, that a pizza place would invest in drone delivery to meet this demand. According to a recent article from American Bazaar, the Mumbai-based Francesco's Pizzeria successfully made a delivery by drone.

The order went to a friend of the owner and was delivered to a high rise less than a mile from the shop in about 10 minutes. This is not the first pizza delivery that has been handled by drone as a Domino's Pizza in the U.K. handled one of these last year. However, this is the first delivery of this kind in India.

High rollers

Other companies are looking at drone delivery on a smaller scale. According to an article from Business Insider, over the Memorial Day Weekend, the Marquee Dayclub at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, starting running a bottle service that was delivered via drone. In an Instagram video posted by club co-owner Jason Strauss, a drone can be seen hovering about a group of party goers and slowly descending until one such individual reaches up, removes the bottle of champagne that is housed in a bucket of ice and the drone flies off, back to where it came.

Here is it being used more as a way to show social status. The service requires a $20,000 minimum to be spent and notice of 24 hours. It also comes with photos of the delivery to your group that is "perfect for social media posting."

For now, drone delivery is very much in its infancy and it is going to be some time before any kind of reliable systems is available for commercial use. However, that doesn't mean organizations should wait until then to improve their delivery systems. With the help of a quality third party logistics service, any company will be able to improve operations across the board.