The Australian outback is a magical place. Home to all manner of natural wonders, like extremely swole kangaroos and nature’s parasol the frill-necked lizard, along with opal mines, ghost towns, the corpses of Burke & Wills, and more camels than the Sahara.
Do you know what the outback is missing, though?
Burritos.
Thanks to a little company known as Alphabet (yeah, the Google people), an initiative called Project Wing has partnered up with beloved Mexican chain Guzman Y Gomez to trial burrito delivery to Royalla, a rural town on the border of the ACT and NSW.
G&G have built a pop-up kitchen in the outback to test the drone-delivered burritos, with a number of Royalla families scoring the mobile app that can summon Mexi-snacks to their door at over 100kph.
According to the restaurant chain,
We needed to test if our food would hold and stay fresh in a drone that travelled through the skies at 120kms per hour. In a special ‘package’ designed by Project Wing’s engineers, our burritos are able to stay hot and fresh but most importantly stable and secure as the drone travels so your food is delivered ready to enjoy.
No-one wants an unstable burrito.
There’s a launch site, a hooking-up-the-package protocol, and an all-round admirably rigorous testing process currently underway.
At the moment, the drones can only fly 10km from their depot, but Alphabet’s X division, who are responsible for Project Wing, are working on improvements all the time.
Does this mean that we’re looking at a future in which everything is delivered by drone, Gryzzl-style?
Almost definitely yes. At least the robo-pocalypse will be delicious.
