Store of the Future   //   January 17, 2025

Why Wing chose malls as the next frontier for drone delivery

After flying drones from Walmart stores and fast-food restaurants to shoppers’ backyards, Alphabet-owned Wing is now taking flight from shopping malls in Texas.

Wing said in December it would partner with Brookfield Properties and DoorDash to offer drone delivery from more than 50 merchants at two malls in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area: Stonebriar Centre in Frisco and Hulen Mall in Fort Worth. The service is available to restaurants and retailers that deliver through DoorDash and are also tenants at either of the malls.

Residents within 4 to 6 miles of the malls can use the DoorDash app to order full meals, hot coffees, cold beverages and retail items under 3 pounds. This is a continuation of DoorDash and Wing’s partnership, which first began last March to expand the reach of drone delivery to more customers and provide an additional mode of transport for DoorDash orders.

Jesse Suskin, head of corporate affairs at Wing, said the company identified malls as a good fit for the program because they are close to many people’s homes and have plenty of flat spaces, such as parking lots and garages. It opens up dozens of new restaurants and retailers within the mall to drone delivery.

“It’s kind of a nice marriage of three companies that have a forward, leading approach to last-mile delivery,” Suskin said in an interview. “When moving food, we’re going to be some of the fastest in the game in terms of being able to move from when somebody places an order on their DoorDash app at their home to when they get that package delivered.” Wing’s DoorDash deliveries take less than five minutes on average, the company said.

This also comes as mall owners have been looking for new ways to modernize their properties to make up for lost anchor tenants and changing demand from younger shoppers, such as building apartments, adding more restaurants and entertainment venues and building housing on site.

Katie Kurtz, Brookfield’s svp of business development, told Modern Retail in an interview that it was important to the company to be the first mall operator to offer drone delivery. “We’re always looking for what’s innovative — how do we think outside the box, how do we as Brookfield offer our tenants something that is above and beyond the norm.” She said Brookfield is in talks with Wing to expand the program to at least two or three more regions, depending on FAA clearances.

“We still want [shoppers] to be able to purchase from in-mall tenants and be able to serve them in the way that they need,” Kurtz said. “While traffic is up and shoppers are back — and I think that we’ve seen this post-Covid trend of people wanting to be out and shop in person — there’s also just, logically, so many hours in the day sometimes where you can’t physically get to the mall and or to a store.”

Wing continues to scale up its operations in Texas. It’s a region where multiple drone delivery companies — including DroneUp, Wing and Zipline — are testing new technology to deliver packages. In October, Wing’s head of operations Nate Milner said the company had launched a new facility there every two weeks. About a year ago, Wing announced an expanded partnership with Walmart in the area, in which it would expand its drone delivery offering to 1.8 million more households in the region.

“For a subset of our customers, they love not only that it’s fast, that it’s a drone delivering it for the environmental benefit or for the excitement of their kids, maybe being in the front yard or backyard to watch that drone deliver the package,” Suskin said.

So far, drone delivery is limited by package size and delivery range. Brad Jashinsky, director analyst for Gartner, said that as drone delivery services expand their reach and capabilities, they could eventually play a bigger role in helping retailers use stores to fulfill online orders instead of solely relying on distribution centers.

“This could help bring down fulfillment costs as regions allowing drones expand, delivery ranges increase, payloads expand and costs come down,” Jashinsky said in an email. He added that being listed on DoorDash, whether for drone-delivered items or not, provides a large increase in exposure for retailers.