Skip to main content

Oscar Mayer’s ‘Wienerdrone’ is raining hot dogs on customers

Oscar Mayer Introduces the Wienerfleet
First pizza,
Recommended Videos
then donuts, and now Oscar Mayer hot dogs.

Recent events clearly suggest fast food fans will be very well catered to once full-fledged drone delivery services get off the ground.

Oscar Mayer is the latest to join the party, this week unveiling the WienerDrone as part of its WienerFleet, which of course includes its famous WienerMobile.

The WienerDrone can zoom along at speeds of up to 50 mph for the super-fast delivery of its “1 hot dog” payload. It can fly up to 1,200 feet from the ground, too, which Oscar Mayer helpfully informs us is a distance equivalent to “2,400 hot dogs end-to-end.”

The unique quadcopter looks a lot like the WienerMobile, only smaller and with propellers attached. If we’re honest, the delivery method looks rather haphazard and could result in a messy rearrangement of any sauces slathered on your snack. Instead of landing on the ground and gently plopping out the goods à la Amazon Prime, or carefully lowering the item via a winch à la Project Wing, it simply releases the hot dog from a great height for the customer to catch. Good luck with that.

No, we don’t expect to see the WienerDrone coming to a barbecue near you anytime soon, but it was fun seeing Oscar Mayer’s take on this whole delivery drone malarkey.

Besides the drone and the car, the new WienerFleet also includes the WienerMini for guaranteed rapid delivery, the autonomous WienerRover for off-road missions, and the WienerCycle for fast navigation of busy urban streets. The fleet plans to hit the road on the July 4 holiday, heading for Weiner, Arkansas where the drone will no doubt be lobbing a hot dog or two into an expectant crowd.

Pizza and donuts

Domino’s Pizza in New Zealand is already offering a limited drone delivery service for fans of the cheesy delight, flying orders from one of its outlets to customers in under 10 minutes. The service complements its bike-based delivery riders, and Domino’s has no plans to replace them, though the company has noted that as many as 70 percent of its customers would be more than happy to receive a drone-delivered pizza.

Domino’s flying machine, built by Nevada-based drone specialist Flirtey, lowers the boxed pizza using a tether. Safety features include low-battery return-to-safe-location programming and auto-return-home commands in case of a low GPS signal or communication loss.

More recently, a number of donut deliveries were made by the flying machine to city officials in Denver in a trial run organized by LaMar’s Donuts. Denver mayor Michael Hancock, who was one of the recipients of the sugary snack, described the delivery as “exciting stuff,” adding that autonomous technology “is our future [and] this is how we’re going to become a more efficient 21st-century nation.” And with all that fast food flying about, possibly a slightly-larger-around-the-waist nation, too.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
The best portable power stations
EcoFlow DELTA 2 on table at campsite for quick charging.

Affordable and efficient portable power is a necessity these days, keeping our electronic devices operational while on the go. But there are literally dozens of options to choose from, making it abundantly difficult to decide which mobile charging solution is best for you. We've sorted through countless portable power options and came up with six of the best portable power stations to keep your smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other gadgets functioning while living off the grid.
The best overall: Jackery Explorer 1000

Jackery has been a mainstay in the portable power market for several years, and today, the company continues to set the standard. With three AC outlets, two USB-A, and two USB-C plugs, you'll have plenty of options for keeping your gadgets charged.

Read more
CES 2023: HD Hyundai’s Avikus is an A.I. for autonomous boat and marine navigation
Demonstration of NeuBoat level 2 autonomous navigation system at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show

This content was produced in partnership with HD Hyundai.
Autonomous vehicle navigation technology is certainly nothing new and has been in the works for the better part of a decade at this point. But one of the most common forms we see and hear about is the type used to control steering in road-based vehicles. That's not the only place where technology can make a huge difference. Autonomous driving systems can offer incredible benefits to boats and marine vehicles, too, which is precisely why HD Hyundai has unveiled its Avikus AI technology -- for marine and watercraft vehicles.

More recently, HD Hyundai participated in the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, to demo its NeuBoat level 2 autonomous navigation system for recreational boats. The name mashes together the words "neuron" and "boat" and is quite fitting since the Avikus' A.I. navigation tech is a core component of the solution, it will handle self-recognition, real-time decisions, and controls when on the water. Of course, there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes with HD Hyundai's autonomous navigation solution, which we'll dive into below -- HD Hyundai will also be introducing more about the tech at CES 2023.

Read more
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more