CINCINNATI — Kroger customers in the Centerville area will soon have the opportunity to get their groceries delivered right to their doorstep thanks to Drone Express, a drone company that has three locations in the U.S., including Cincinnati.
Craig Baudendistel, the Drone Express mechanical engineer, is instrumental in putting together the drones. He and the team create about six to seven of them a day.
“Build time is less than a day,” said Baudendistel. “There’s some gluing that goes on. It takes a little cure time, but once that’s finished, these can be built relatively quickly.”
Baudendistel also came up with the design and build of the drones. While coming up with the design, he knew they had to be big enough to deliver groceries.
“We went a lot bigger planning to have more than five pounds in delivery,” he said. “So you have to have space underneath your drone to be able to fit different size boxes.”
Beth Flippo is the Telegrid Technologies chief technology officer. Drone Express is a division of that company. Flippo’s parents founded Telegrid more than 40 years ago primarily using wireless mesh networks.
“We decided to go into Drone package delivery because that seemed to benefit the most from having this radio,” said Flippo. “By allowing the drones that are delivering packages to speak to other drones delivering in the air.”
Flippo believes this new delivery service will help families and others get items they need without the hassle that it took before.
“Things our kids forget to tell us that they needed for school can be at your house before they get on the bus,” she said. “So it’s not just food. It’s all items. Most of them are available already from the Kroger Market Place.”
Here’s how it will work: A customer puts in an order with Kroger. The order will then be packaged and then attached to the drone. The drone pilot will then fly it to your home.
“You can have things delivered directly to you in 15 minutes,” said Baudendistel. “So Kroger has these pre-packaged plans for now, but you can in theory get anything you want delivered right to your house.”
Right now Drone Express is in the pilot phase and is only available at the Kroger in Centerville. But they hope to officially begin the service by mid-June.
