Walmart and Wing Launch Drone Delivery in Houston

Houston just got a little more futuristic, and thankfully not in a flying cars kind of way. Walmart has officially launched drone delivery in the greater Houston area, partnering once again with Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery company, to bring groceries and household essentials straight from the sky to customers’ homes in about 30 minutes.

This marks Walmart’s first drone delivery expansion of 2026 and Houston becomes the second Texas city to get the service, following an earlier rollout in the Dallas area back in 2022. If everything goes according to plan, this is just the beginning of a much larger national push, as The Houston Chronicle reports.

Five Walmart stores, hundreds of flying couriers

Wing’s drones are now operating from five Walmart Supercenters across the Houston region, including two locations in Katy, one in Crosby, one in Kemah, and one in northwest Houston, where a ribbon cutting ceremony officially kicked things off.

Each drone can fly up to six miles from its home store, although Wing does not force them into rigid straight line routes. These aircraft are lightweight, electric, and designed for short, fast hops rather than long endurance flights. Think surgical delivery, not marathon endurance.

For now, Wing is focusing exclusively on single family homes. Customers can visit Wing’s website, enter their address, and instantly see whether their backyard qualifies as a drone landing zone, or more accurately, a drone hovering zone.

Wing says its drones are accurate enough to lower packages into an area roughly the size of a picnic blanket, using a winch system gentle enough to deliver fragile items like eggs without turning breakfast into a science experiment.

Beating traffic, one propeller at a time

Heather Rivera, Wing’s chief business officer, summed up the appeal of drone delivery in a way that will resonate deeply with anyone who has ever sat motionless on a Houston freeway.

Drone delivery, she said, is fast, convenient, and completely immune to traffic jams.

That last part may be the strongest selling point of all. While delivery drivers wrestle with congestion, red lights, and the occasional existential crisis at an intersection, Wing’s drones simply fly over it all.

Rivera also made it clear that Wing does not view services like Uber Eats or Instacart as enemies. In fact, Wing already partners with DoorDash, positioning drone delivery as a complement rather than a replacement for traditional last mile logistics.

The goal, according to Wing, is not to eliminate delivery options, but to give customers another way to save time when they need something small, fast, and local.

A growing network with big ambitions

Ahead of the Houston launch, Wing revealed it has already completed roughly 750,000 deliveries from about two dozen Walmart stores across its existing markets. That number alone suggests this is no longer a novelty experiment.

More importantly, Rivera noted a clear behavioral pattern among users. Once customers try drone delivery for the first time, many come back and place another order. Curiosity turns into habit, and habit turns into expectation.

Houston is just the next step. Walmart and Wing plan to expand coast to coast by the end of 2026, with future launches expected in cities like Miami and Los Angeles.

If that timeline holds, drone delivery may soon shift from headline grabbing tech story to something far more disruptive and far more dangerous for traditional delivery assumptions: normal.

DroneXL’s Take

Houston traffic alone makes this launch feel like a public service. Walmart and Wing are quietly doing what many drone delivery projects never managed to do, scaling slowly, choosing practical use cases, and letting real customer behavior guide expansion.

No rooftop theatrics, no wild promises, just groceries, eggs that survive the trip, and time saved. If drone delivery is going to win, it will not be flashy. It will be boring, reliable, and slightly magical when your milk arrives from the sky faster than your neighbor can back out of their driveway.

Photo credit: Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle, WING.