7-Eleven completes first month of drone deliveries

7-Eleven has completed 77 autonomous drone deliveries to customer homes in the United States.



Through its collaboration with Flirtey, a service that supports commercial drone deliveries to customer homes in the United States, the convenience store chain conducted regular weekend deliveries to mobile shoppers during November. A dozen select shoppers used a custom app to place orders, which were fulfilled from a dedicated 7-Eleven store, the company said.



Once shoppers place an order, merchandise – including items such as hot and cold food and over-the-counter medicines – is loaded into a custom Flirtey drone delivery container and flown autonomously using GPS technology to the customer’s house. Once at its destination, the drone hovers in place and lowers the package. On average, customers receive their packages less than 10 minutes from the point-of-order, the company said.



Along with listing all items available for delivery, the interactive app also notifies customers when their drone was loaded, when it departed from the store, and an estimated time when it would arrive at their doorstep.



7-Eleven kicked off its partnership with Flirtey in July.