Imagine clicking on an app, ordering a hot cuppa, and five minutes later – pronto! – your next caffeine fix is delivered courtesy of drone delivery in your own backyard.
Or maybe it’s a pizza, burger, something vegan maybe, or whatever it is that satisfies your culinary craving.
Doesn’t matter.
In Lafayette in the States an Israeli start-up, pioneering pilotless drop-offs, has transformed the once-quiet skies of the North Carolina town with orders of up to three kilograms.
Quoted in British portal Supply Chain Dive, Flytrex CEO Yariv Bash has championed his company’s test-phase arrangement with local transport regulators as a real clincher.
"Online ordering has seen an amazing boom in the last year and a half because of Covid-19.
"With that, you're seeing interesting and better on-demand delivery services, because the current options are just not good enough."
Thing is, it’s expensive.
Amped by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) permit it received in May, it was all runway paddles down for lift-off as Flytrex tripped the light delivery fantastic.
Soon though it dawned on Bash and his buddies that regularity would have to make up for lack of reach.
Confined to little ol’ Lafayette, relatively speaking of course, lack of numbers is affecting real return – but only for the moment.
“The goal is to increase the volume for each one of our stations (there are two). The more deliveries we make from any one of those locations, the more affordable it becomes for everybody,” says Bash.
The experiment in Lafayette though remains an interesting one for the possibilities of much wider skies droning with deliveries coming in.
Started in 2011 as a GPS-fitment outfit for drones, Flytrex quickly recognised that the business of drones itself was a much better bet - and now, following the FAA’s nod for its involvement in Lafayette, believes it will soon go ahead with a business-to-consumers (B2C) model.
Interestingly, it means that drones could possibly deliver goods to courier vans in a neat last-mile hand-in-glove situation, ruling out fears of delivery drivers losing their jobs.
Amazon, certainly, must be a tad green in the face because of the Flytrex flag fluttering over Lafayette.
Since Jeff Bezos and his empire launched Amazon Prime Air in 2014, it’s been a bit of a crawl for the e-commerce company to win FAA approval for its plans.
Its first drone delivery was only made two years later – in the UK.
Says Amazon on its website: "We are actively flying and testing and it will take time and more hard work before our operations are ready to scale. We're excited about this technology and one day using it to deliver packages to customers around the world in 30 minutes or less."