Jersey Mike’s has always been an ambitious company, and now the iconic sandwich chain is tackling another ambition: drone delivery.
The New Jersey-based sandwich chain announced today that it would be launching drone deliveries, shipping sandwiches to select residents of Holly Springs, North Carolina. The drone deliveries are being conducted by Flytrex and Causey Aviation Unmanned, which is one of the major players in food deliveries via drone.
Here’s how it’ll work:
- Eligible residents must place a Jersey Mike’s order through the Flytrex app (to be eligible, you must live in the one nautical mile-radius within Holly Springs).
- Once the order goes through, customers can use the app to track their order status.
- The drone will arrive to front or backyards, depending on the home, and then lower the package via a wire.
For now, the flights are only being held in Holly Springs, North Carolina, given the operators hold a Federal Aviation Administration waiver to conduct delivers across a radius of one nautical mile. Flytrex has been operating in North Carolina for more than a couple years at this point, under a partnership with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, which is a part of the FAA’s BEYOND program. The BEYOND program launched in November 2020 and brings private companies, public entities and smaller governments together to test use cases like drone delivery. Jersey Mike’s is not the first company to deliver food in Holly Springs. Back in 2021, Flytrex added the Holly Springs Towne Center to its lineup, delivering food from It’s Just Wings to eligible homes.
Jersey Mike’s is no stranger to innovation, starting from the company’s history. It even dates back to 1956, when founder Peter Cancro was just 14. Cancro was working part-time at a sandwich shop that the owner put up for sale. Cancro raised $125,000 to buy it and grow it into the roughly $975 million business it is today. More recently, Jersey Mike’s was ranked #4 on Entrepreneur’s 2022 Franchise 500.
The sub shop is most famous for its “Mike’s Way” style, meaning you can get your sandwich topped with your standard onions, lettuce and tomatoes, as well as “the juice,” which is a zingy blend of olive oil and red wine vinegar.
Flytrex’s drone delivery ambitions
The partnership with Jersey Mike’s is just one of many to come out of Flytrex as of late. In March of this year, Flytrex announced a partnership with restaurant company Brinker International (which is the parent company of major chains including Chili’s Grill & Bar and Maggiano’s Little Italy) to deliver food in Granbury, Texas near Dallas-Fort Worth. That project was also done alongside Causey Aviation Unmanned.
Flytrex claims it has already completed thousands of drone deliveries, which it says is more deliveries via drone than any other company in the U.S.
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