Soon, the friendly skies over Atlanta will include new Walmart branding, thanks to expanded drone delivery plans.

Those plans continue to grow through Walmart’s work with Wing Drone Delivery to offer customers delivery via Wing drones.

Walmart is No. 2 in the Top 2000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by annual web sales. The retailer is also No. 8 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the top such marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV). Digital Commerce 360 projects Walmart’s online sales will reach $148.59 billion in 2025.

Why Walmart will try out drone deliveries near Atlanta

Wing details its new drone plans for Atlanta-area Walmart delivery on Dec. 3.

“Atlanta is a powerhouse in aviation, and we’re bringing the same spirit of speed and efficiency to thousands of Walmart customers across the Metro just in time for the busiest season of the year,” said Heather Rivera, chief business officer at Wing. “This launch is a critical next step in our significant expansion, turning drone delivery from novelty to norm as residents make drone delivery part of their everyday shopping.”

Walmart also cheered the news.

“This is a new technology,” said Greg Cathey, senior vice president of digital fulfillment transformation at Walmart, during the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Woodstock. “It’s a proven technology. We’ve had it in Dallas-Fort Worth for quite some time and the customers love it.”

Walmart rolled out drone delivery in parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the autumn of 2023 and said it has seen success there.

How Walmart’s drone delivery with Wing will work

Wing officials said Walmart delivers thousands of orders to customers’ homes weekly in DFW with plans to expand the service to other markets in 2025.

Orders are filled from existing Walmart Supercenters, packed into boxes, hooked to drones, and can be on a customer’s doorstep within 30 minutes. Wing’s drones can carry payloads up to 3 pounds.

Experts told Digital Commerce 360 that this is just the beginning.

“Given the cost of omnichannel to retailers and demand for same-day deliveries, retailers are pursuing strategies to reduce costs while still maintaining customer service levels, whether through different modes of transportation or software applications that help businesses better source inventory, orchestrate and fulfill orders across a network,” said Jordan Speer, a research director who works with sourcing, fulfillment and sustainability for retail and supply chain at the market intelligence firm IDC.

Speer said the move to drones allows Walmart to have an ultra-fast delivery method for very light, very local deliveries and then re-optimize their ground capacity for other deliveries.

“I think this is, on the one hand, just another competitive move in the same-day ‘air race,’ but also signals Walmart sees drones as moving from the pilot stages to being a real-world repeatable logistics solution that is gaining traction across the network,” Speer explained.

She added that by partnering with Wing, they are adding another layer to their portfolio, which suggests that they are serious about pursuing this strategy and finding the partners that work best for their specific strategies, even in different regional markets.

Advantages of drone delivery for Walmart

The drone’s relatively light payload will somewhat limit the service’s B2B business impact, according to Speer. Speer said that Walmart might look to provide autonomous delivery services to both end consumers and businesses, but until they have drones carrying heavier payloads, this would still be restricted to lightweight deliveries.

“So they would only be able to meet small urgent needs, versus the typical bulk deliveries that businesses receive,” Speer stated.

Speer also questioned whether at some point the public will push back if drone delivery becomes ubiquitous.

“It’s important to consider the societal implications of walking around with fleets of drones whizzing by overhead,” she said. “At a certain critical mass, the public may push back on high-frequency drone drops, which might be noisy, create collision risks, and generally disturb the peace.”

Rich Pleeth, founder of Finmile, a last-mile artificial intelligence (AI) logistics SaaS company, said that geography will also hamper expansion for Walmart’s drone delivery. Pleeth said drone delivery isn’t — at the moment — conducive to urban areas.

“Drone delivery is not a city solution,” he said. “You cannot safely fly through dense urban skylines. Drones scale fastest in suburban and rural areas where flight paths are open, predictable, and quiet enough for regulators and communities to accept. Walmart knows this and is rolling out in places where the tech actually works today.”

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