Behind the scenes of drone food delivery in Finland

The weather in Finland is known to be unfriendly; However, your food order may be delivered by drone.

On a rainy day after the annual Slush conference in Helsinki, Finnish entrepreneur Ville Leppälä took TechCrunch behind the scenes of a three-way partnership between Irish drone delivery company Manna, DoorDash-owned food delivery platform Wolt, and his startup Huuva.

Huuva, whose name means kitchen hood, raised seeds led by General Catalyst in 2022 with the promise of bringing good food to the suburbs. Although it has branched out from its cloud kitchen origins, its business still relies heavily on delivery technology — now including drones.

“If available, we will send your order by drone.” That’s how Wolt informs customers who order from Huuva’s Niittari location in Espoo, which is part of the Helsinki metropolitan area, but which Leppälä sees as a particularly good fit for the concept.

Building on Manna’s track record of completing over 50,000 deliveries in Dublin, operations in Finland began quickly once the appropriate permits were obtained. After a trial phase as of February, the drones have been fully operational for the past two months in Espoo, flying from a launch pad shared with delivery-only grocery store Wolt Market.

For end users, this means they can order different styles of food from Huuva’s partner brands, and add some groceries as well — each drone can hold about 4.4 pounds, and Manna can dispatch two of them at once.

This adds another layer of comfort, but also speed. Unlike drivers, drones won’t get stuck in lunchtime traffic. According to Lepala, this is key to making sure the food arrives fresh; It wouldn’t hurt if the unit economics were more sustainable for Huuva, too.

The Huuva team estimates that regular deliveries currently cost between 5 and 6 euros each (about $6 to $8), while drone deliveries can go as low as 1 euro ($1.16). This does not include the additional costs Manna would incur due to setting up its Finnish operations, although the weather was not as difficult as it could have been for the newcomer.

Coming from Ireland, Mana drones have already been thoroughly tested in terms of wind and rain, in such large quantities that snow also falls under the same umbrella. Icing presents an additional challenge, but according to local operations and maintenance leader Makar Nalimov, in those cases they will only use other delivery methods, especially since the use of defrosting chemicals is also out of the question when it comes to food.

These fallback options highlight that Manna drones are part of a rapidly expanding suite of last-mile delivery solutions. Wolt itself already uses curbside robots from Coco and Starship in Finland, and its parent company DoorDash has built its own Dot, which began making deliveries in Arizona earlier this year.

Amid rumors that DoorDash may be building its own drone delivery software, as well as teaming up with Alphabet-owned Wing, direct partnerships could be beneficial for companies like Manna and Huuva. The food startup is considering expanding to another location in Espoo where Wolt Market would be out of the equation, which would make it possible for the launch pad to be close enough to the kitchen for orders to be delivered through the window.

In the current operation, the Mana launch pad is located a short distance away; Delivery workers on e-scooters pick up orders from the kitchen in a thermal bag, then transport them to Manna operators. Under the supervision of maintenance leader Nalimov, they place orders on the scale and balance the weight if necessary before placing them in special bags approved by the organizers.

Resistant bags are just one of the many safety measures that Manna takes to comply with its regulations and procedures. For example, batteries are systematically swapped out so that drones always fly with a full charge. According to Nalimov, there is also redundancy at all levels, as well as preparation for different accident scenarios – and a parachute as a last resort.

Although Mana has staff on the ground, its mission control center is located in Ireland. There, operators evaluate LiDAR maps, review the planned flight itinerary and drop a pin for the drone to deliver within a short radius of the customer’s location. If the conditions are not met, the order is returned to the shipping company. If approved, the drone takes a photo of the landing site for final human confirmation before lowering the package with a biodegradable rope.

This process has now become routine for the local Mana staff, who have become busier. According to Nalimov, he and his team are now handling double-digit deliveries daily and are confidently preparing for their first operational winter in Finland. As for Huuva, it is now ready to double its drone deliveries in Espoo, with one additional wish: to be allowed to put its logo on those bags that regulators allow.