Want your roast duck to fly again? Then head up to an office park in Yangpu, home to Shanghai's only publicly accessible drone delivery station.
The service is operated by Meituan, and is currently available in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing. Shanghai has two locations, a public station located in the Hulian Baodi office park (where Meituan's Shanghai Headquarters are located), and a private one accessible only to the oh-so-fancy residents of Fudan's Handan campus.
As with everything these days in China, the process begins by scanning a QR code on the machine. Food and drink from 46 restaurants are available via drone, from hot pot to paella to Dairy Queen, and it works exactly like a normal waimai order, with no extra delivery fees. The Meituan app (or Wechat mini program) shows the progress of your order, and you can track your lunch as it floats over the bustle below. If you want to order ahead of time, you can set your location to the office park, and a "Deliver by Drone" button appears in the app.
While waiting for the food, streams of delivery drivers rushed by, some of them holding a dozen different bags to stuff into the nearby delivery cabinets. Then, down from the sky, the drones began to arrive for the lunch rush, each with a leisurely single box.
They land on top of the station and deposit food inside, where customers retrieve it by entering a code. In comparison to the frantic humans, was that a touch of happiness I heard in the drone's whirring? A delivery guy paused a moment to watch the drone deliver its cargo.
Hoping to give the drone a challenge, I ordered a soup, thinking that mid-air turbulence may lead to a potential sloshing situation. But as usual, the restaurants are wizards at packaging, and 20 minutes after ordering everything came out exactly as it should.
I took the food to a pleasant park on the other side of the office complex to eat and contemplate our soon-to-be robot overlords.
How to find it: The drone station is located in the Hulian Baodi Office Park (互联·宝地), a short walk from Exit 1 of the Ningguo Road metro station. Walk through the park to the middle of the office towers, the station (known as 互联宝地无人机空投柜) is located next to building 6. Drone delivery is available from 10am to 6pm.
