Walmart’s CEO had wine delivered by drone to his front door and believes it’s key to the company’s future success

A flight engineer performing a functional test of a delivery drone at the Walmart Supercenter in Florida.

Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon gets his groceries in style.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer and Retail Conference in New York on Tuesday, the head of the country’s largest supermarket chain said he got wine delivered by drone right to his front door.

He said he ordered the drone delivery when his wife Shelley realized she didn’t have a key ingredient in the kitchen.

“A few weeks ago, Shelley’s making Chicken Marsala, and she said out loud, ‘I forgot the cooking wine,’ which meant I was supposed to get up off the couch and stop watching football and go get Marsala cooking wine,” McMillon said.

“But what we had was a drone delivery in less than 15 minutes that dropped it right at my front door, and that was pretty cool,” said McMillon, who lives in Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart is headquartered.

“I think our future looks like big baskets moving slowly at a value and urgent deliveries happening in a really fast time in a variety of ways,” McMillon said.

Walmart launched drone deliveries in six states in 2022 but was forced to scale back in recent years.

In August, DroneUp, Walmart’s drone delivery partner, told Axios that drone deliveries were not economically sustainable for smaller, low-cost packages. They closed 18 Walmart delivery hubs in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Tampa. The retailer currently offers drone deliveries in three locations in the US — Bentonville, Dallas, and Virginia Beach.

Walmart aims to have the largest drone delivery footprint of any retailer in the country. In January, it expanded its drone delivery radius to serve 1.8 million additional households in the Dallas-Forth Worth area.

Drone deliveries cost $12.99 per trip for Walmart+ members and $19.99 per delivery for non-members.

McMillon’s comments come as Walmart reported strong third-quarter earnings in November, beating analyst expectations.

It saw comparable US sales growth of 5.3% year over year and reported an operating income growth of 8.2%.

Walmart representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment from B-17.