Is Hong Kong ready for food deliveries by drone? Foodpanda talks up full automation and new markets
Co-founder and chief executive officer Ralf Wenzel says reliance on motorbikes ‘like something out of the 80s’ and has watched the tests of drone deliveries in Singapore ‘very carefully’
Fancy having some tasty food delivered by drone to your high-rise window?
It may not quite work like that, but online delivery company Foodpanda hopes to become one of the first takeaway services to start using drones to deliver orders. The start-up wants to be fully automated after becoming operationally profitable in all its markets in February.
Ralf Wenzel, co-founder and chief executive officer of the company backed by Frankfurt-listed Rocket Internet, said the current reliance on motorbike deliveries felt like something from the 1980s.
“The delivery of the future is not only being taken out by walkers in the street, or people driving motorbikes,” he said.
“We did the test with drones in Singapore and we are following [the technology] very, very closely.”
He admitted drone deliveries would be subject to local government regulations and the process by which drones would pick up and deliver orders would have to be examined.
Foodpanda joins Amazon in looking to deliver goods by unmanned drones as the e-commerce giant plans to use the technology to send out packages in 30 minutes or less under its Amazon Prime Air service.