Future Of Food Delivery: Cathie Wood's Ark Investment Sees Drones As Game-Changers

An analyst from Cathie Wood-led Ark Investment Management envisions drones delivering your food in the future and they are backed by research.

What Happened: Customers are ditching fast casual food delivery in favor of pickup owing to high delivery charges. Growth in third-party food deliveries touched its peak of 126% during the pandemic in April 2020. However, it has fallen since to 6% on a year-over-year basis, Ark noted. Ark sees Domino’s partnership with Uber Eats last month as spurred by this deceleration.

Resistance to delivery fees should curb further price increases. However, drones could deliver packages for far less than humans, the investment solutions provider said.

“Should the FAA relax regulations on "beyond visual line of sight," drone services might attract consumers to food delivery once again,” they said.

Why It Matters: Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BLVOS) refers to the distance where drones can operate outside the normally visible range. To fly in the zone, one needs a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration which is quite hard to acquire.

A majority of uncrewed aircraft currently fly within the operating team’s sight, reducing its scaling potential.

Photo Courtesy: S.Galindo On Shutterstock.com

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