Walmart reveals the items customers are ordering for drone delivery the most

• Walmart is expanding drone delivery to six states and four million households.
• Customers primarily use the service for last-minute convenience needs, like food and medications.

Walmart just announced plans to expand its drone delivery program to reach four million Americans by the end of the year, and it also revealed some information from deliveries so far.

Hamburger Helper is the best-selling item at one of the delivery hubs, senior VP of innovation and automation at Walmart David Guggina wrote in a blog post. So far, customers primarily use the service for convenience, like "a quick fix for a weeknight meal," such as hot dog buns, Guggina wrote. Other sellers include diapers and over the counter medications like Tylenol.

Walmart buyers in the delivery range can order items totaling up to 10 pounds for drone delivery, and anything that fits safely in the drone is eligible, Walmart said. The service costs $3.99 and is available from 8 am to 8 pm.

Walmart completed hundreds of deliveries in the past few months with positive feedback from customers, it said in the post.

The grocery chain is growing its partnership with DroneUp to create 34 delivery sites in 2022, offering grocery delivery by drone to customers in six states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah, and Virginia with the capacity to complete one million deliveries by the end of the year.

Walmart has partnered with other drone companies in the past, including Flytrex in Zipline in addition to DroneUp. In 2020, senior vice president for last-minute delivery Tom Ward told Insider the different partnerships were part of Walmart's experimentation "to increase [delivery] speed and convenience in a very new and innovative way."

Other companies have also experimented with drone delivery in recent years. Amazon is running a small test program with Prime Air drone deliveries this year, Insider reported. Google's drone delivery arm, Wing, partnered with Walgreens to distribute food, medications, and other household necessities in 2021, and UPS started delivering prescriptions by drone with UPS in 2020.

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