Walmart has expanded drone delivery across Greater Houston, bringing ultra fast delivery to more than one million consumers and paving the way for hundreds of additional drone locations.

Chris Walton, Shelley Huff, and Chris Niesen discuss why this is much bigger than a drone story. They explain how it represents the next evolution of fulfillment, changing customer expectations, and the growing race to deliver products faster than ever before.

▶️ Watch the full Fast Five episode here: https://youtu.be/-F7f2EFXG9k

Walmart is expanding its drone delivery footprint in Greater Houston, adding eight new hubs and bringing its total to 13 nests.

That's a quote.

Nest with Wing making the service available to more than 1 million area consumers actually like that phrase nest.

That's kind of cool for a drone.

According to Chainstorage, Wing owned by Google.

Parent Alphabet confirmed the expansion with Nest, now located in Houston.

Spring, New Caney, Crosby, Katy and Kemah, Texas.

Hope I got all those pronunciations correctly.

Shelly Walmart keeps adding drone hubs faster than I can say cowboy boots, particularly in Texas.

Is all the hype surrounding drone real or do you think Walmart is getting ahead of itself?

You're the perfect one to answer this question.

This is just absolutely awesome.

To me.

This isn't a drone story, it's a fulfillment story.

This is, you know, Walmart is essentially answering a need for, you know, faster delivery on emergency items.

And so they're turning what used to be a 30 minute trip to Walgreens or CVS into a 5 minute decision where somebody can, you know, essentially, you know, get batteries or, you know, something for their baby super fast.

I mean, this, when you think about the use cases for this, it's like new parents are like the perfect customer for a drone delivery model.

So, so to me, this isn't a drone story, it's a fulfillment story.

It's one tool in the toolkit of Walmart.

The other thing that I would offer here is that Walmart is no longer piloting.

They are scaling.

And so that means they have all the data to essentially say this is working.

There are proven use cases for this.

We're scaling it.

It's no longer a pilot.

This is part of our Future fulfillment plan.

100%.

It's like Maverick told Goose, I feel the need, the need for speed.

Because that's what it is.

It's about speed.

It's about the brick meets click data that we talked about on a recent show.

10% Of all shipped to homeowners are now ultra fast in under one hour or less.

That's what this is about to me.

But Chris, I'm curious, like you kind of poo pooed the delivery robots.

What are your thoughts on drones here?

Like, are you thinking this is more hype than reality?

Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm actually going to agree wholeheartedly with everything that you've both just said.

Wow.

I don't think Walmart is getting ahead of themselves in any single way.

Like, the consumer desire for immediate delivery is only headed in one direction and it's not slower.

Like, they want to have their stuff when they want to have it.

So, you know, 1 million drone deliveries by May.

That's not a test anymore.

That tells me that they're in this for the long term.

Like, they continue to expand their use cases from, you know, important things that Shelley was talking about to things like missing pizza toppings for family pizza night, which is a bit interesting and maybe a bit far fetched, but at the same time, it's the reality.

Right.

We're all thinking about that thing that we missed on our last trip and we're figuring out how do we get this as quickly and as easily as possible.

What I think is interesting about this in the longer term is, is the actual role that this has for the physical store.

At the end of the day, this does mean fewer routine trips to stores.

And to me, that means that the stores have to work harder as a destination.

And I'm actually all for that.

You know, say more.

Why I'm all for that because, you know, at the end of the day, like, I see a lot of stores where the standards have dropped, the experience has dropped.

And if every retailer is fighting for those customers, it means that they have to work harder and they have to present themselves in a way that they're not today.

The one call out that I'd have that's a bit unique from the story is, you know, they talk about a lot of these packages being dropped into yards or driveways.

And so I'll be interested to see how that plays out.

And I wish I had that experience here because if you're anything like me and in my neighborhood, we've been overrun by rabbits.

And I'm a bit concerned that my packages will go missing because of those rabbits.

We're no longer talking about porch pirates.

We've been overrun by rabbits.

Quarter the show.

Quarter the show.

Chris.

Oh, my God, that's so great.

Yeah.

And the one caveat I have about this story is, is I'm shocked to hear that.

It's really great to hear that we're all aligned on this too, because.

Well, first of all, I talked about this at the NCAA meeting yesterday, and it was the one point in my speech where I was like, I don't know that the audience is buying what I'm throwing down.

So it's good to hear you guys are validating my thought process to some degree.

But the one caveat I have about it is it's still Texas, right?

Like, I want to see them talking about this more loudly outside of Texas.

Like, I think Shelby, like your neck of the woods.

Phoenix is where it's supposedly coming very soon if isn't already in pilot, you know, stage of operation.

So maybe Shelly will need to have you shoot a video for us, for all of us at Omnitok of how that works.

But, but I, I think this is dead right?

I mean, I think what the the other high level strategic thing here is what does for strategically for Walmart.

Yes, it gets their current assortment faster, but it gets them into QSR delivery like we talked about with Subway.

It gets them into the convenience store business as well.

Those are both that provides two outlets for Walmart.

Those are bigger businesses for Walmart that they're not currently in.

And then the second piece as well is it keeps you and this Chris, what you were saying, it keeps you sticky with the Walmart experience.

It keeps you coming back to the app, it keeps you engaged as a Walmart plus member over and over again.

And and in a world where Walmart is having to battle for consumers time with Google OpenAI, Amazon getting that foothold in there and giving some reason for people to keep coming back over and over again really, really matters.