Thanks to the ever growing city populace and overcrowded streets that stay jam-packed all day long, the pizza eateries might soon have to roll back their “30-minutes or free” delivery scheme; especially in a city like our own Mumbai. But the maximum city is often credited for coming up with ingenious ideas to tackle everyday problems, and a Mumbai restaurateur has found a way to deal with the city’s notorious traffic to deliver pizza on time. A restaurant chain named Francesco’s Pizzeria used a quadcopter drone to deliver a pizza from its outlet in central Mumbai’s Lower area to a high-rise building in adjacent Worli area. Obviously, this is not the first instance of drone being used as a delivery module in the world as we have already seen Dominoes deliver a pizza using a qaudcopter in the UK and companies like Amazon seriously mulling on the using the technology, but it for the first time that something similar has been tried in India.
“All of us had read about Amazon’s plans of using drones. We successfully carried out a test delivery by sending a pizza to a customer located 1.5 km away from our outlet on May 11,” said Francesco’s Pizzeria chief executive, Mikhel Rajani. At present, there are certain restrictions on the regulatory front like the drone not allowed to fly above 400 feet altitude and barred from flying over security establishments, he said, adding the American Federal Aviation Authority’s regulations on usage of drones, expected next year, will help. The eatery even uploaded a video on the YouTube demonstrating their attempt to deliver the Pizza using the drone. “What we have done now will be commonplace in the next 4-5 years,” he said, adding that such customized delivery by drone costs around $2,000.
Update: Most of such attempts across the globe have received flak from the authorities and this story in no different either. After the news on this Mumbai pizzeria went viral on the internet, security concerns were raised by Mumbai police and civil aviation authorities seeking explanation from the company. Mumbai police officials have decided to send a notice to Francesco’s Pizzeria in south Mumbai, while Air Traffic Control (ATC) officials said norms stipulate taking permission prior to flying any object in the sky. Oops, it seems the marketing stunt to popularize the eatery has got them into trouble.
[Via – NDTV]
