Manna Drone Delivery is Coming for the U.S., Aggressively and Without Apology

Bobby Healy, CEO and Founder of Manna Drone Delivery and successful businessman of other technology companies, has his eye on the United States. He is currently operating Manna in Ireland and the UK.

“What areas are you guys planning to go into, is it mostly in Europe or do you plan to jump the pond here and come into the U.S.?” – Paul Barron

“Yeah, we’re 100% focused on the U.S., that’s our biggest target market. If it wasn’t for the regulatory stagnation in the U.S., we would already be there, we want to be there in 24 months.” – Bobby Healy

“Manna Drone Delivery is Coming for the U.S., Aggressively and Without Apology” will explore the actions that Bobby Healy has taken in Ireland. Consequently, that will be the plan he will emulate in America.

Straight to the Consumer

So, you are probably wondering, if Manna was currently in the U.S., what food could we have delivered to our houses? Do they deliver other things? How long would it take to arrive?

Well, they currently have agreements with Ben & Jerry’s. They have agreements with CoCa-Cola and they even deliver medication. They also have an agreement with Samsung. For example, they are delivering Samsung phones, chargers, etc. to consumers directly from the online store. Need grocery items? “We fly off the roof of our partners. We’re on the roof of Tesco, one of the larger grocery chains in Ireland and the U.K.” – Bobby Healy says.

Service Delivery Stats

“We fly at an altitude of 80 metres and a speed of over 80kph –  delivering within a 2km radius in less than 3 minutes.​” Out of a town of 10,000, they have hit 35% of homes already. There are 75% of them participating repeat delivery. They also had a 65% approval during Covid, 2020, now that number is 98%. The goal is to scale Ireland and parts of the UK in ’21, ’22; ’22, ’23 and onward, with an eye on U.S., according to Bobby Healy, Again, “Manna Drone Delivery is Coming for the U.S. Aggressively and Without Apology” points out his constant focus and mention on scaling the business into the U.S.

“One person can do anywhere from 2 to 3 deliveries per hour, a little bit less in the suburbs. With our system we can do about 20 deliveries per hour, per person. The aircraft is totally autonomous. It has on board three flight computers and each flight computer can independently fly the aircraft. It has three sets of sensors, gps, lidar and radar…that obviously has connectivity to our cloud. One person is responsible for 15-20 aircraft at a time at mission control.” – Bobby Healy

Committed to Drone Delivery Safety

“Actually, the important thing is safety. There is no way to scale in this industry if you don’t have aviation levels of safety and engineering in your aircraft. That is where we are different…We’re going to be flying at scale 10 million plus flights a day. Therefore, the law of large numbers dictates that you don’t need a drone or something that takes a year to build, you need something that takes you generations of education from aviation best practice to engineer…When you are flying over a community, or suburb of 50,000 people, you need to be pretty sure that there is no possibility of a failure.” -Bobby Healy

In The 3 Biggest Reasons We Are Afraid Of Drones, I detailed some of the privacy concerns that the public had expressed. However, it seems that of the people that were concerned in the beginning, more people (in Ireland and the UK at least) have opened up and either (1) value the convenience of the service over the privacy concerns, (2) have researched and trust Manna, or (3) experienced it and the experience changed their minds.

“Manna Drone Delivery is Coming for the U.S. Aggressively and Without Apology” has given some insight into Bobbly Healy’s plans for a new way to get us our food in America. However, I do wish that there were some harder questions asked in interviews. For instance, “Where are the statistics on trust and privacy, as Manna rolls out this service in multiple areas?” I realize that approval ratings, based on surveys, have increased over time, but it would be nice to see the time-stamped data as it progressed and is progressing.

Also, Mr. Healy says that he is “creating jobs” but he also stated that he is placing one person at the mission control desk for 15-20 drones? He said, “the only loser in this is the guy on the bicycle, the guy on the motorbike, or the guy in the car, the [low-wage] gig economy job anyway and what we’re doing is we’re creating jobs for well-trained employees of a drone delivery company.”

Also, I wish that he was asked how well he thinks he will do in competition with Amazon’s years of infrastructure and chain supply that is, by the way, already trusted and established?

Lastly, do Manna drones deliver in rain or storms? We know that drones are sensitive to high winds and weather.

What steps has Mr. Healy taken to move into the US marketplace or is he just watching regulation? If you have run across any of these answers, feel free to start a discussion in the comments.

Drone Delivery Competition

There are delivery companies operating in California and other places currently. Some are food delivery only and others extend outside of food delivery. I am working on another blog addressing these. Meanwhile, here are Mr. Healy’s thought on China.

“China is a closed market for companies like us. We don’t look at them as an opportunity, but we certainly look at every other continent in the world as an opportunity.” – Bobby Healy

The reason that he said this is because China already has formed its delivery service called The Standard. Here’s a bit about it. “The Specification for Express Delivery Service by Unmanned Aircraft (the ‘Standard’) issued by the State Post Bureau of PRC will be effective from January 1^st, 2021. The Standard was jointly formulated by industry-leading players including EHang (Nasdaq: EH), JD.com (Nasdaq: JD), and ZTO Express (NYSE: ZTO). As China’s first industry standard for express delivery service by unmanned aircrafts, the implementation of the Standard is of great significance for improving the last-mile delivery service, ensuring the safety of operations, as well as promoting the development of intelligent aerial logistics of urban air mobility (‘UAM’) industry.” –EHang

What’s Next for Drone Delivery

Keep your eyes peeled for another blog that I am developing on the many other drone delivery companies. These are companies that are currently operating or are soon beginning operations. Tripp Shannon, CRO of DroneUp, is quick to point out that “drones are the future of developing smart cities”, so we will also delve into that.

Conclusion

Would you like to hear more details on Manna’s plans to come to the U.S.? Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Ukela is the founder of Tech-Ke Solutions.  A programmer from a rural Tennessee town,  she’s worked her way through a degree and a half, studying business and computer science and information technology.  She and the Tech-ke team love discussing, debating and  blogging about technology. They are Drone, BMW and Programming enthusiasts but love educating and sharing just about anything tech-focused.

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