The news: Walmart and Wing are expanding drone delivery to seven new metro areas—Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Salt Lake City—bringing their combined service footprint to nearly 20 US markets.

The companies aim to build a network of more than 270 locations serving over 40 million US consumers by 2027.

Zooming out: Drones are one piece of Walmart’s all-out push to speed up delivery. Wing’s drones can fly up to 60 mph and deliver orders in as little as 30 minutes, with an average delivery time of under 19 minutes.

Still, they represent one tiny cog in a very large machine. Walmart and Wing have completed more than 1 million drone deliveries to date, which represent a rounding error against Walmart's overall fulfillment volume that delivered more than 3.5 billion same- or next-day units in Q1 2026 alone.

The competition: Walmart has clearly pulled ahead of Amazon in drone delivery coverage. Amazon recently received FAA approval to deliver a wider range of electronics by drone, but its service remains confined to eligible areas of Texas and Arizona. Walmart's expansion into major coastal and Sun Belt metros gives it a meaningfully broader footprint as Amazon is still working to scale.

Implications for retailers: While drones have practical constraints—they can carry a maximum payload of 5 pounds and are less reliable in certain weather conditions—they could serve a specific niche by handling the type of last-minute, low-weight purchases where speed matters more than basket size. That could make them an efficient tool for capturing incremental demand rather than replacing traditional delivery.

However, the economics remain uncertain. Drone delivery has historically been more expensive per package than ground-based methods, and while Walmart and Wing are betting that scale will bring costs down, that assumption has yet to be proven at meaningful volume.

If Walmart can make the math work—a big if—the service could offer significant utility. Roughly 1 in 5 consumers consider delivery speed the most important factor when shopping online, and most consumers don’t care how their order arrives—they just want it quickly. In that sense, drone delivery could extend Walmart’s appeal, while also expanding its reach in rural areas or markets where its physical footprint is less dense.