Just imagine! Your family has just returned to the RV after a day of running, funning, or sunning. Everyone is famished and as the default chef, it’s up to you to put edibles on the picnic table. Forget peering into the fridge. No need to fire up the grill. Grab your phone instead. While everyone else shuttles off to shower, change, and relax, let them know that food will be on the table in 10 minutes. Then take off your shoes, sit back, and watch, yes, watch, for the food to be delivered—via drone!
Delivery systems
That’s right! Your food may soon be airlifted to your exact RV site in the campground. One potentially bright spot in the pandemic experience has been the advancement of food delivery systems. Turns out that companies like Grubhub and Uber Eats sometimes charge as much as 30 percent in transaction fees. That’s enough to give a restaurant owner heartburn, and in response, restaurants have searched for alternative methods for delivering their food.
Years before we faced a pandemic, Amazon discussed using autonomous aerial vehicles to deliver packages within 30 minutes of a customer placing an order. Amazon Prime Air hasn’t taken off as expected, but now the FAA has cleared the runway, er, skies, to allow for product and food deliveries, so we may see more and more companies, especially eateries, offering this futuristic experience.
El Locos drones
One restaurant trying out personalized drone food delivery is El Pollo Loco. This California-based company started backyard food delivery drops this past summer. According to Food on Demand News, the El Pollo Loco drones, El Locos, will deliver hot, fresh food to customers’ back yards or front doors to ten select California communities during this test of concept period.
Other restaurants have used drones to get food orders part of the way to consumers. The drones deliver to parking lots where a human driver receives the food and takes it to the customer. El Pollo Loco is taking that concept one step further, by delivering its food directly to customers via its drone delivery system.
Wave of the future?
Why do restaurants see drones in their future? Food can be delivered in as little as five minutes from a customer placing an order. The drone can carry up to 6.6 pounds within a five-mile radius. The cost for drone delivery can be as much as 30 percent less than the standard car delivery, and insurance for a drone is one-tenth the cost of insuring a standard motor vehicle. Yep, it all comes down to money. But if a drone can provide my fire-grilled chicken to my RV campsite, I’m all in favor!
Have you ever had a drone delivery? If so, we insist you tell us about it!
##RVT1037
Wow!!!
I respect all the opinions expressed here which everyone is entitled to.
Think about the positive possibilities that this new twist on getting items delivered. Heaven forbid someone needing life saving medication delivered to your campsite in an emergency. The drone would use the same GPS technology that you would use on your smartphone to find the nearest pharmacy, hospital, camp-site, campground, RV site or RV resort in an area you may be unfamiliar with. Think about all the modern conveniences that we have that forward thinking entrepreneurs have allowed us to enjoy in our leisure/retirement time. Everything we use in our preferred modern method of RV experience, the cell phones, the very tablet/computer that was used to express one’s opinion on this topic came from someone willing to think outside the “box”. With change, good can be enjoyed by all. Just my respectful two cents.
Yeah, just what we need….noisy buzzing drones in the campground and our back yards.
If they ever develop those things to fly silently, then perhaps I’d rescind my objection to them. In the meantime, the only use I see for them is equivalent to sporting clays!
Drones are to noisy to have coming to campsites. When camping we like it quiet.
I hope to always camp outside the range of food delivery drones. For my wife and I, getting “out there” is the whole point.
A drone with any kind of weight on it (like a ‘full meal deal’ or two) doesn’t have all that much range. I’ve had drones for over eight years now. I have some experience in these things. So, if El Pollo Loco isn’t close to your home already, forget any airborne deliveries. This is a gimmick at best.
I would think you’d be camping in or near a large city for this. I think it’s a pretty neat idea.
Gawd I hope not! invasion of privacy, noise, and a definite security and safety concern. NO.
The day I see a drone in my campground is the day I demand a refund then leave and never come back.
That’s a bit over the top, Gary.
No campgrounds give refunds. I’m sure you can handle it.
Good to Know, Gary. I’ll take your campsite
and get that coal-fired chicken!
Another Star Wars article. I suggest they shape said drone as a Pig!
Cool idea! The one and only time I’ve ordered food by Door Dash the driver couldn’t find my space, got angry, and left the food outside by the office and didn’t tell me. Yeah, I’d much rather have a drone than some angry kid who can’t find his way around. Machines are taking over because people are, well, kinda stupid.
Really? Drones delivering food to an RV park? That’s part of our culture I’m trying to avoid when we are enjoying our time out. I guess Gen X and Gen Z need all the latest greatest technology to be happy.
Dont worry Dan, won’t happen. Nothing more enjoyable than the futuristic crowd thinking were living like the Jetsons. Ponder this. Porch pirates steal packages in broad daylight, whats a drone worth?
Part of my culture is to never be in an RV park, let alone one close enough to be served by a drone.
Couple issues here. We camp in tree covered campgrounds that have no physical address. Campsites are often laid on in seemingly random fashions that often don’t make sense. Some will only take delivery at their office. And have you watched the Amazon, UPS, and Fed-Ex drivers zoom around campgrounds that do allow deliveries? Now turn a drone loose in this environment. I think my food’s getting cold – hung up on the Spanish Moss in that giant Live Oak tree over there. Can I call the restaurant (our nearest one is 5 miles away) and get a refund?
I’m guessing you order by smart phone at the exact location you want the drone to land. Drone will use GPS to land exactly there.
GPS can be inaccurate of course but I am sure they have methods to go to the exact spot by reference instead of lat/lon. The reference point shouldn’t shift much in the short time involved
In the park we are moving into have many large trees including Live Oaks, Palm Trees, Sycamore, and our new home has a BIG Pecan tree in the back and a Palm tree in front. Every drone I have seen the “pilot” has to guide it around obstacles, only the multimillion $ military drones use radar and LiDAR to keep from flying into objects. That will undoubtedly affect delivery rates, as I said in a previous post people are not thinking their ideas through.
I want to see the ornery ” Old Guy” come out of his unit with a baseball bat, swinging. Heck, id love that up on youtube.
Some of my thoughts exactly, parks are going to have to cut down the beautiful shade trees to allow drones to fly around. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen. This is typical thinking of someone who gets an idea and then only thinks about their idea and never thinks about consequences of that idea. Kinda like the global warming idea with sub freezing temperatures in sunny FL. 50 years ago all they talked about was the coming ice age. People don’t bother to think their ideas through, that’s what removing common sense does by replacing that with tons of book learning. College education can be great but I think the liberal agendas in college is outweighing common sense.
Here we go again….
Come on Chris, say it! LoL
I think you’re just a bit behind on technology.
Exactly, Ask George Jetson, he’ll tell ya.