Domino’s has achieved a major milestone by delivering its pizza via drone in the town of Whangaparaoa, New Zealand.
This is a pilot project and customers can only participate in this programme if they live within a 1.5km radius of the Whangaparaoa store.
As part of the pilot service, the drone delivery testing is currently only available to select customers with plans to launch pizza-by-drone deliveries at an increasing scale in the near future.
The drones have been custom-made by Flirtey, a start-up with which Domino’s entered into a partnership back in August this year. Flirtey designed the drones with carbon fibre, aluminium and 3D printed components.
The drones have autonomous flying capabilities and built-in safety features. These drones can automatically return home after delivery, when GPS signal or communications signal is lost, or when running on low battery power.
Domino’s Group CEO and managing director Don Meij said: “We invested in this 
partnership, and technology, because we believe drone delivery will be an essential component of our pizza deliveries, so even more customers can receive the freshest, hottest pizza we can offer.”
According to Domino’s, the delivery time can be reduced to an average of 10 minutes, with mass deployment in other markets. But, governmental restriction on drones in several countries is an issue needing to be addressed before it can actually deploy mass drone deliveries.
Flirtey CEO Matthew Sweeny said: “We are moving closer and closer to widespread store-to-door drone delivery.
“To conduct these deliveries in an urban environment while delivering a hot, fresh pizza, is a validation of our delivery system that assures Flirtey is prepared for mass market deliveries around the globe.”
According to Flirtey, the drones and their delivery method have been designed to work with Domino’s present delivery fleet and is being fully integrated into online ordering and GPS systems.
