Remote Burrito Delivery On Offer From Alphabet’s Project Wing

We’ve all been there. You’re in the middle of nearly nowhere, and all you want in life is a burrito. Nothing will satisfy your craving for a delicious mix of rice, beans, guac, salsa, cheese and whatever other range of delicious trimmings you can get added on top. But the nearest burrito bar is miles away, and you just can’t make it. What if you could just whip out your phone, order a burrito on an app, and have it delivered to your location via a drone? Wouldn’t that be awesome? Well, now you can! Sort of…

Project Wing, one of Alphabet’s companies that falls under its X banner, is testing drone delivery of burritos in a remote area of the Australian Capital Territory. The area has been picked precisely because of its hard-to-reach and out of the way nature. For these residents, going to the nearest store for anything at all will involve a 40-minute round trip. Being able to have things delivered to their door in this way is a real boon. The burrito delivery is a partnership with Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez, and you can see the whole thing in action via this slightly over-the-top promo video:

Medicine delivery, probably more important than burritos

Before you start accusing Project Wing of using a potentially powerful piece of technology to cater to a more trivial pursuit like food delivery, they are also using it to deliver medication from pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse. This has far-reaching implications. All around the world there are people who live in areas that may be idyllic as a surrounding but that are difficult to reach. For elderly residents living in more remote areas, the ability to have your essential medications delivered to your door could have a real impact on your life. On a more basic level, this kind of technology could also help busy parents and professionals who may already face constraints on their time that drone deliver could help alleviate.

As of yet, there is no indication as to if and when this technology will be more widely available, and we can expect it to undergo much more testing before it becomes the norm. You could say that they’ve picked burritos as the delivery test just to get column inches, knowing that they’re a popular favorite right now and will get attention, but in a recent blog post, they point out the other considerations they have been making. We’ll admit that we are excited about the prospect of freshly delivered tinfoil-wrapped whoppers, but the medication delivery and other applications is where the real story is.