In China, McDonald’s will deliver your Big Mac by drone

In China, McDonald's is offering drone delivery of its Big Mac meals to customers in the city of Shanghai. To order, customers must use Meituan, the dominant food delivery and retail app in the country. Once an order is placed, a drone equipped with the McDonald's logo and containing the selected food items will make its way through the city's waterfront neighborhood, known as West Bund.

The drone route is a 1.93-mile-long flight path that connects a McDonald's kitchen in Shanghai's Xuhui district to a series of drop-off kiosks along the river. Customers can collect their meals from a designated handover point, which is a booth with a landing platform that resembles McDonald's branding. The drones are capable of carrying up to 5.29 pounds of food per flight, and a typical order takes around 10 minutes to travel from the kitchen to the kiosk.

Meituan's drones have been in operation since 2017, and the company claims a "99.999% safety factor" with its drone delivery system. McDonald's China chief impact officer, Gu Lei, revealed that the two companies conducted experimental trials in Shenzhen before expanding the drone delivery routes to Shanghai. The company aims to install scattered flight nodes across all districts, ultimately providing coverage throughout the city.

Currently, about 20 brands utilize Meituan's drone delivery service, and the low-altitude economy, which includes drones and robots, is growing rapidly in China. The government's five-year plan aims to commercialize the airspace above rooftops, with an expected market value of around $521.7 billion by 2035. Although drone delivery in the United States is still in its early stages, China is leading the way in this innovative transportation method.