Drone Delivery Is Live Today, And It’s 90% Cheaper Than Car-Based Services

Amazon may be failing to deliver on its promises of drone delivery programs. But a home-grown Irish company is running live autonomous drone delivery right now in Galway, Ireland, has licenses to take it across the European Union, and is poised to — at the right moment — take its tech and knowhow across the Atlantic.

To Canada, at least.

Regulation in the U.S. is too far behind the times.

"We’re delivering coffees," Manna CEO Bobby Healy told me in a recent episode of the TechFirst podcast. "We’re delivering burgers and fries. We’re delivering ice cream, broccoli, melon, you name it, we’re delivering it. And it arrives perfect, you know, piping hot coffee, foam intact, little design on top of the foam still intact."

Manna is doing 2,000 to 3,000 flights a day using fully autonomous suitcase-sized drones that fly at 50 miles an hour — that’s 80 km/hour in Ireland — at an altitude of 150 to 200 feet. Near your home, it’ll scan the area with lidar and radar to find a safe spot, descend, drop off your delivery, and whiz back for its next pick-up.

A Manna drone in operation, flying autonomous deliveries in Galway, Ireland.

Manna

Each drone runs seven or eight deliveries an hour, and there’s a huge advantage over an Uber Eats or Skip The Dishes style car delivery.

Think 10% of the cost:

"In the USA today, it’s costing between $6 and $9 base cost to a platform to move product, to get product from restaurant to the store — or to the house," Healy says. "So think that key KPI, one person, roughly two orders per hour. One Manna personnel can do 20 deliveries per hour … simple number, right? So our cost is one tenth the cost of using the road. It’s literally that simple."

Not only is it cheaper, it’s better.

Because it allows a tiny bookstore or pizza parlor in semi-rural Ireland to have a better delivery guarantee than global supergiant Amazon.

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Drone delivery is here. Right now. For real. And it's awesome.

TechFirst with John Koetsier

Amazon has next day or even same-day delivery for some items, depending on where you live. In Manna’s sphere of operations, drone delivery is literally built into the process of ordering such that while the food is being prepped, the drone is coming. When the food is done, the drone arrives, and most deliveries are within five minutes.

Average time: two minutes, 40 seconds.

Take that, Amazon.

It’s almost unfair to pile on the world’s heavyweight e-commerce champion, however. Amazon’s drone program is laboring and faltering, according to a recent Wired story which talks about "the slow collapse of Amazon’s drone delivery dream," and claims Amazon has laid off well over 100 employees at Amazon Prime Air, which launched in 2016 but has yet to deliver anything even close to its initial promises.

Bobby Healy, CEO of Manna

Bobby Healy

Manna’s perfecting the process in Galway, but it has a European-wide license from EASA, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, to scale across the half-billion-person market.

Manna’s not going to rush things, however.

CEO Healy says they’ll scale to another town soon, then go across Ireland after that.

"[If] we do that town of 40,000 and we’re happy with it, then we’ll roll it out across Ireland all of next year, which is addressable [to] about a million people we’ll try to deliver to across next year," he says. "We have absolute ambitions to roll this out across the entire world, including the USA, but Europe will be the first region to scale."

The USA is a bit problematic.

While Europe and Canada have very forward-looking regulators, Healy says, the U.S. is a little delayed. It’s a more complex regulatory environment, and it’s not clear whether it will catch up to EU regulation, or Canadian, in the next few years.

Once it is, however, expansion can happen quickly.

"We scan the area with lidar; that gives a really, really nice way to identify where is there a gigantic antenna, where is there vegetation, and all these things that we like to know about," Healy says. "If I take a town of 50,000-100,000 people, I wouldn’t expect it to take more than a week or two to ... put the infrastructure in."

(And lidar, by the way, is privacy safe: it’s low-res.)

Bigger cities will take longer, of course. And, it’s not just about drones flying: it’s also integration into ordering and delivery platforms.

Once the system is in place, however, people get use to two-minute delivery in a hurry.

"People are ordering coffee and croissants every single day in this town," Healy says. "And it’s no longer for the excitement of seeing a drone showing up; it’s because they get beautiful hot coffee with a beautiful, fresh pastry instead of going to the coffee shop."

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John Koetsier

I forecast and analyze trends affecting the mobile ecosystem. I've been a journalist, analyst, and corporate executive, and have

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Forging A Path Beyond The Plate

By Krista Felton (she/her), Development Manager

Food and community help local teens find a seat at the table

The Hunger Coalition believes in the power of food. As a hunger relief nonprofit near Sun Valley, Idaho, our work honors culture and tradition to weave a stronger, more resilient community.

The Hunger Coalition

One of our most meaningful programs is Bloom Youth Project (BYP) — a two year, paid internship for high school students that uses our community farm as its workspace. Bloom Youth interns come together to grow food, cook meals, and run a mobile farmer’s market while learning about themselves, making friends, developing skills, working hard, and giving back. They start by learning how to grow and cook vegetables, but end up forging a path well beyond the plate.

We recently invited three of our budding vegetable aficionados to share their experiences in their own words.

Jamie Jordan (they/them) has been known to play the guitar and sing for customers at Bloom Mobile Markets — affordable produce stands that pop-up throughout Blaine County. Jamie recounts how the internship experience has helped them develop a deeper sense of self and of community:

The Hunger Coalition

The notion of college always seems to permeate the average American teenager’s life like a plague. With every interaction I have with an adult comes the forever dreaded, "So, where are you going to college?", to which I respond, "I’m not too sure yet," followed by some vague description of my interests. The truth is, I had no idea what skills I had, much less what I wanted to study. Even figuring out what summer job I wanted seemed a drag, as I had nothing to go off of. Then, Bloom Youth Project came along.

A simple teacher recommendation and I was off to a job interview. I’d done job interviews before, but none as comfortably anxiety-inducing as my interview with BYP. I decided that, for this interview, I wouldn’t try too hard, and I’d be whatever felt right in the moment. I prefaced the interview with a lightheartedly jovial "I’m nervous", and proceeded to allow myself to exist with my soon-to-be supervisors.

I’m not trying to be cliche in saying that this internship has changed my life, I’m simply stating a fact. Those four years of Spanish I took as a graduation requirement seem less inane when I find myself using it while interacting with Spanish speaking participants. These interactions and this space where I can let myself just exist helps me find my passions in every customer at our markets, or every participant I meet during distribution. I find my humor in meetings with the other interns, I find my leadership coinciding our adolescent desire for chaos, and I discover my confidence building from every awkward situation I find myself in. Despite still having no idea what I’d aim for in college, I find myself existing in the present and building myself in the present, all within the safety of these walls.

Betzy Guzman Ibarra (she/her) loves being part of a diverse community that is kind to each other and works together. She recounts how the program has not only taught her new things, it’s also brought her closer to her mother:

The Hunger Coalition

I’ve been an intern for about 7 months and the abundant amount of opportunities I’ve gotten is tremendous. I’ve learned so much from cooking for myself and the interns to translating and working with customers to help them use our Smart Choice program. As a Hispanic, both my parents came to the US knowing little to no English. My mom has always looked out for me and hoped that my future was big and bright. She went to school and worked every day, but she always had time for me. Even now she still works 6 to 7 days a week and handles many jobs at once, using her money on my younger sister and I to make sure we have the best learning experience possible. She only gets one day off for herself, so I wanted to get a job to try and take some weight off her back.

I found BYP through many of my teachers and a few friends who were in this program before. It seemed like a pretty good job for my age, so I decided to sign myself up for an interview. When I initially got hired I was a really shy girl that didn’t speak much. I was just happy I was able to work, make my own money, and soon buy things for my family and I. I’ve progressed quite far since then.

This internship has done many workshops that help us create new skills for future jobs and college life! All the things I’ve learned have helped me plan my future out in better ways and has also helped me cultivate new healthy habits. I’ve learned to help our community in bigger and better ways and learned to love helping people. I’ve also gotten my mom involved in some programs so that she doesn’t have to worry about food or anything other than what we need. I’m truly grateful for my mother, and I don’t know what I would be doing right now without her.

I’ve branched out into different areas in The Hunger Coalition. Right now, I am part of a leadership track that involves the development team. We get many cool projects and get to interact with new donors and customers. We’ve also started spreading out in different social media, and I can’t wait to get our message out and see The Hunger Coalition improve! *Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Joanna Castillo (she/her) credits Bloom Youth Project with helping her become more adventurous and overcoming her anxiety:

The Hunger Coalition

When entering my junior year, I was an anxious girl that didn't know what her future would be. I hated when people asked if I had a job because my anxiety always got the best of me, and I always just said "no". The thought of being in public scared me. It always took me a long time to get comfortable with people so I didn't want to work with people whom I didn't know too well. I also didn't know if I would be good at certain jobs or what skills I preserve. Anxiety caused turmoil in my life and almost prevented me from achieving my goals.

So when my teachers told me about the Bloom Youth Project internship, I was nervous because it would be another commitment to my daily schedule and my first real job but I thought it would be nice to work with other teens. When they said that I got the part and what job we were going to be doing, I questioned if this was all too much to handle, but I think it was a good push while working. I was able to make new friends and be able to try new experiences.

I feel like I am part of the community, whether that be through giving out food boxes or selling fresh veggies my team and I grew at our pop-up mobile markets, or even just talking with The Hunger Coalition crew. In this internship, we have had so many opportunities where we have learned life skills, kitchen skills, and money handling skills. I know it would be cliche to say this internship has helped me, but it has allowed me to grow more confident with myself and with other people. This internship has helped me because I’ve started working with friends that I can relate to and not just co-workers.

This job has not only provided job skills but helped my personal life too with them giving me assistance with college by giving me access to a college counselor. As well as help my mom learn to volunteer and give her the chance to build a relationship she wouldn’t have made before. They are always supportive of what is happening in your life and making sure that you feel cared about.

As I go into the future, I will never forget the kindness that The Hunger Coalition has given me. I will obtain a career that will allow me to help others. I will, in turn, pay this kindness and learning opportunity forward and will never forget how their support changed my life.

Our youth interns teach us all a bit about jumping into new challenges head first, embracing our fears, and drawing closer to one another through service. We are grateful for these fierce teens and their dedication to fostering food and friendship with our neighbors in Blaine County.

If you’d like to join in on the conversation or find ways to bring more good food and community to your neighborhood, sign up for our newsletter or follow us on social media. Let us know which food traditions you’re looking forward to the most this holiday season.

This is a content marketing post from The Hunger Coalition, a Forbes EQ participant. Forbes brand contributors’ opinions are their own.

The Hunger Coalition

The Hunger Coalition is a nonprofit in central Idaho working to end hunger in a radical new way. In nearly twenty years, they've evolved

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