Burritos from the sky: Are drones the future of delivery?

On a windy afternoon late last year, on the lawn outside City Hall in Rowlett, Texas, a strange-looking vehicle cleared trees directly in front of me. It hovered in the sky for a moment before a second vehicle descended on a thin rope along the road to a dry patch of grass. The little white thing deposited a load of brown paper, then rode its tether back to its waiting mother ship, which turned and departed. The experiment lasted less than 30 seconds.

This was not some UFO expertise. This was a Zipline delivery drone, in the real world, and that load was my lunch. This was just one of two million deliveries this company has made since 2016, carrying everything from household supplies in rural America to life-saving vaccines in remote Africa. Soon, drone deliveries will reach more places.

Zipline is a California-based company that has only been tossing burritos and other items in the Lone Star State since 2025, but has proven itself elsewhere in the world for nearly a decade.

The company first began operations in Rwanda in 2016, delivering medical supplies in minutes to remote locations. Independent studies have shown The life-saving nature of Zipline’s deliveries makes it a rare startup with a real feel-good story at its core.

In Africa, Zipline operates what it calls Platform 1, or P1, fixed-wing, unmanned aircraft that look like larger versions of the toys your grandfather built out of balsa in the basement. Workers load four-pound payloads into the belly of these planes, then launch them into the sky via a giant slingshot.

Once in the air, the P1s set their own routes, up to 120 miles round-trip, reading weather data along the way and finding their own way out of the storms. They then deploy the payload through the parachute before returning home to reload the payload and replace the battery.

The delivery machines used in the United States are somewhat more sophisticated but similarly independent. These planes are called P2, rely on five engines and can transition in the air from hovering to traditional horizontal flight. This means they can launch and land vertically, or hover above the landing zone. What they give up in efficiency from the P1 (max range here is 24 miles) they gain in flexibility, making it better suited to the kinds of suburban areas that Zipline currently targets.

The P2’s defining feature is its tethered boyfriend, named Zip. Each Zip has its own single motor as well as room for eight pounds of payload about the size of a breadbox. The propeller is there in case it needs to fight the wind as it is lowered from the P2 hovering above it.

The P2 is equipped with redundant sensors, even able to monitor transponders close to aircraft. The array of sensors and intelligence on board means it is an unmanned aircraft capable of flying safely even in crowded urban airspace beyond line of sight, or BVLOS in FAA parlance.

Zipline aircraft capabilities have been proven by a strong safety record with more than 125 million miles flown. That’s reassuring, but I was curious how Texans would respond to this whole thing. After all, this is a state full of people you wouldn’t think would appreciate sensor-laden drones hovering over their homes.

“Overall, compared to some of the things we envision in our community, there hasn’t been as much opposition as you might expect,” Rowlett Mayor Jeff Winget told me. “I think most people were pretty excited about it.”

Wingate told me the approval and licensing process took about five months, with Zipline helping to keep its footprint minimal.

After I received my lunch, I stopped by one of the Zipping Points, where packages are loaded for delivery. This vehicle just happens to be in a Wendy’s parking lot, but it can be quickly and easily deployed anywhere pickup trucks are needed.

The pressed dots are contraptions, strange white pods with a pair of metal arms reaching into the sky. In theory, these enable retail workers to upload and withdraw orders. The P2 then hovers above, drops his little friend Zip to retrieve the payload, and then flies off to the hungry recipient.

I say “in theory” because as I watched, some of the deliveries needed a little manual help from a small team of Zipline employees moving between retailers to ensure deliveries ran smoothly. Some of the pickups took a few tries, but they were all on their way quickly enough.

More importantly, even on a windy day when the drones would normally be at their loudest as they battle the wind, the traffic above creates less noise than at the nearby intersection. The P2 hovers high enough while receiving or delivering packages that it’s frankly difficult to hear, and it’s much less noticeable than the average consumer drone.

While Mayor Wingate said the feedback he receives from constituents is incredibly positive, the relatively low noise pollution should help keep everything in check as service continues to expand. However, there have been some less positive reactions to the rollout.

John Eric Ige, director of the Texas chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), said there have been some reports from concerned citizens since Zipline began operating in Texas. One, filed in September, described a strange hovering object that lowered something that was moving straight down, then “re-engaged” before disappearing.

He also told me about someone else who reported a similar “mother ship” directly deploying a smaller object. “She got frustrated with people at work and friends making fun of her. It’s unfortunate. She actually witnessed something,” Iggy said.

This thing, of course, was a delivery drone. This is hardly a repeat of what happened last year New Jersey Scare Dronesbut MUFON representatives in Houston and Phoenix better get ready. These two cities will be the next to receive Zipline service within the next few months.

How was my lunch? I have to admit, it was fresher and hotter than any delivery burrito I’ve ever received, a noticeable step up from what I’m used to from countless ground-based food delivery services. Ordering through the Zipline app has never been more complicated than with Uber Eats. My burrito had a $0.99 delivery fee, plus a 20 percent service charge (maximum of $6). No, you do not need to flip the drone. If you’re not feeling the Chipotle taste, you can currently place orders through Blaze Pizza, Buffalo Wild Wings, Crumbl, Little Caesars, Walmart, and Wendy’s.

In the retail drone delivery space, Zipline’s main competitor is Alphabet suitewhich also works with Walmart. While Wing has managed an impressive 750,000 deliveries, that’s less than half of Zipline’s tally. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Air recently suspended its tests after a while A couple of malfunctions. For now, no one seems ready to challenge Zipline’s early lead, especially as it expands into Houston and Phoenix. This progress has earned the company a valuation of $7.6 billion on its most recent raise of $600 million.

Yes, this is another attack by robots on human jobs, but honestly, this is one I can get over. In a city like Rowlett, if you get food delivered to you, it’s going to come to you by car, and the idea of ​​a human driving a 4,000-pound car carrying a burrito in a paper bag is just a bit of a stretch.

Photography by Tim Stevens