[jchoong]

I'ld add that drone delivery for takeout would be a nice win, given that most restaurants that deliver are already limited to nearby locations and speed is desired.

With a proviso that it might be easier in a suburban situation to begin (given a lawn to drop off the goods).

[ghaff]

The thing is that quick, low-price takeout delivery to a limited radius of households is pretty much a solved problem. I suppose one could imagine more industrialized takeout-only restaurants in suburban locations but, again,one could create such a chain today and indeed we have them for say pizza. They're not very good but they're big businesses.

[ams6110]

If you could solve the problem of needing to directly interact with the customer to collect payment, I'd think food delivery would love the idea of drones. The biggest cost of a pizza delivery shop is paying the drivers. They normally get an hourly wage, plus mileage if they are using their own cars.

They'd need to solve payment collection; a lot of people still pay cash for things like food delivery.

[ghaff]

I don't use any of them because I don't live in an urban area, but my understanding is that apps like GrubHub can handle the payment process.

[jchoong]

This "They'd need to solve payment collection;" is an intriguing problem if it is still present. The spate of startups (doordash/postmates/et.al) solves the problem (and more) but I certainly wonder if there's a more focused solution to the specific problem. Would there happen to be more specific details/datapoints?