North Carolina Emerges As New Drone Delivery Hub With DoorDash + Wing Launch
Exploring the exurban geography powering aerial economics
DoorDash and Wing are expanding their partnership, bring drone-powered food delivery to the southern exurbs of Charlotte, North Carolina. This builds off previous launches in Australia, parts of Southwest Virginia, and near Dallas.
Residents near the The Arboretum Shopping Center in south Charlotte browsing the DoorDash app will notice a “Drone” icon on the app; tapping that will let them browse restaurants eligible for aerial delivery. Orders are then loaded up at a hub, before being flown at 65 miles per hour and lowered via winch to the customer; deliveries take about 15 minutes.
Why Charlotte?
The “first in flight” state has made a number of regulatory and policy changes that make it as drone-friendly as Virginia and Texas. NC has pre-cleared the feds’ required environmental impact review. Local participation in the FAA’s Integration Pilot Program (IPP) and then the BEYOND Program enabled advanced BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) testing under controlled conditions. State legislators have also passed laws preempting the ability of cities to regulate or restrict drone deliveries.
But I would argue that geography, more than policy, is driving this launch. The neighborhood surrounding the mall is, for lack of a better description, an urbanist’s nightmare: there are no sidewalks, just endless cul-de-sacs; the road layout winds circuitously around golf courses and highways; transit service is scant. If you wanted to hit the mall for a taste of Panera Bread or Curry Junction, a trip that’s sub-one-mile as the crow (or drone) flies would take you about three and a half by foot or car. That means the economics of traditional courier-powered delivery, or even sidewalk bots, don’t work. But flying over the Cedarwood Country Club might just do the trick!
The zip codes surrounding the mall cum drone hub have a density of around 2,000 people per square mile — that’s quite low, but it’s also rather common for the subdivisions that have cropped up across the southeastern United States over the past few decades. (The Arboretum Shopping Center opened in 1989.)
Out on the poly-centric West Coast, “suburbs” tend to be high-density, working more as interlinked secondary nodes with their own centers of gravity. On the East Coast and in the Midwest, the ‘burbs are lower density and more residential, but often organized around the bones of old commuter rail lines. As drone delivery continues to take off, expect to see it really boom in the especially sprawling new neighborhoods of the sunbelt.
For more on Wing and DoorDash’s deployment, watch their top leadership discuss the partnership at this Curbivore 2025 replay.
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- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew