Less than a month after Little Caesars pulled off an historic drone delivery with a heavy load—larger, family-size orders including sides—Papa Johns has gone airborne with a pilot program of its own.
The No. 4 pizza chain has teamed up with Wing, a drone company, to deliver its new Oven Toasted Sandwiches to customers in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. The move deepens Papa Johns’ relationship with Alphabet, Google’s parent holding company, and builds on the pizza brand’s existing work with Google Cloud that uses AI to improve the customer experience.
According to a press release, “Merging Papa John’s operational expertise with Wing’s technical leadership is the recipe for solving last-mile delivery for restaurants across the U.S.”
If nothing else, drone delivery certainly seems to be surging forward for the pizza industry; Papa Johns is the second major pizza chain to test delivery by drone in 2026.
The Papa Johns pilot has initially launched via the Wing app, but Wing’s drone network will “soon” integrate directly with Papa Johns’ first-party app and Lou AI, its digital pizza assistant powered by Google Cloud, the companies said.
“We are fundamentally shifting how our customers interact with our brand on digital platforms,” said Kevin Vasconi, Papa Johns’ chief digital and technology officer. “With our agentic in-app ordering capabilities and Wing’s ultra-fast delivery, we are redefining the entire ordering experience, ending with fresh, hot Papa Johns delivered by drone right to our customers’ homes.”
Residents near Sun Valley Commons in Indian Trail, North Carolina, can be among the first to get Papa Johns sandwiches—specifically the Philly Cheesesteak, Chicken Bacon Ranch and Steak & Mushroom—delivered at drone speed, but only by ordering through the Wing app for now. Papa Johns just introduced the Oven Toasted Sandwiches in early April.
Until this year, drone pizza delivery was largely a PR stunt that did not seem to advance the technology as a feasible option for everyday use. For example, in 2014 Dodo Pizza, a major Russian chain, made a drone delivery to a community park. However, authorities later said the usage of Russian airspace violated the country’s laws and slapped Dodo Pizza with a fine.
In November 2016, Domino’s got into the act, air-dropping a Peri-Peri Chicken pizza and a Chicken and Cranberry pizza in customers Emma and Johnny Norman’s back yard—but that was in Whangapraoa, New Zealand.
At the time, a Domino’s executive noted, “We invested in this partnership and technology because we believe drone delivery will be an essential component of our pizza deliveries. They can avoid traffic congestion and traffic lights and safely reduce the delivery time and distance by traveling directly to customers’ homes. This is the future.”
But nearly a decade passed with little pizza delivery action in the skies, despite several promises. In 2024, Seattle-based Pagliacci Pizza announced a partnership with drone company Zipline to start delivering pizzas during peak hours the following year, but that never transpired. That same year Jet’s Pizza said it planned to start providing drone delivery, also via Zipline, from one of its stores outside Detroit in 2025. That didn’t pan out either.
On the other hand, independent pizzeria The Columbia Inn in Montville, New Jersey, executed a drone delivery of its own as part of Anthony Pizzi and the NJ Pizza Alliance’s xPizza Day on April 20 of this year. Using drone technology from Dexa, The Columbia Inn flew three 8” pies to the home of pro boxer Vito Mielnicki Jr. in nearby Towaco, almost certainly marking the first-ever drone delivery for an indie pizza shop.
“I want people to see that the future of pizza is in New Jersey,” Pizzi told PMQ at the time.
