Czech Republic drone deliveries could reach shoppers in 15 minutes. Technology schedule 06 November 2026 Opr./edited by AH Drone deliveries of groceries, restaurant meals and over-the-counter medicines within 15 minutes could become part of everyday life in the Czech Republic. Retailers are beginning to explore the potential of the technology, with existing shopping centres, supermarkets and retail parks emerging as possible launch bases. You are reading this content because it is covered by the free limit. Buy full access! According to a new analysis by real estate consultancy Colliers, the key to making drone delivery commercially viable lies not only in the technology itself but also in the availability of suitable take-off locations. Rather than requiring new buildings, drone networks can operate from unused sections of car parks or service areas behind existing retail properties. The US leads the commercial rollout China remains the most advanced market for drone deliveries, while the United States is rapidly expanding its services. Retail giants Walmart and Amazon are among the main drivers. Walmart announced in May 2026 that it had completed its one-millionth drone delivery. Companies including Wing, Zipline and DoorDash are also expanding their operations, delivering everything from restaurant meals and groceries to household essentials and pharmacy products. The service is particularly attractive to customers ordering just a few items who value speed and convenience. However, drone deliveries remain more expensive than conventional transport. The estimated cost of a drone delivery was approximately USD 13.50 in 2025, compared with around USD 2 for a traditional vehicle delivery. According to Colliers, expanding the network of launch sites is essential to reducing these costs by shortening flight distances and increasing delivery density. The cost per shipment falls as the number of take-off points in a metropolitan area rises. Drone economics are therefore driven less by better machines than by the availability of suitable properties. Blanka Sovová, director of retail real estate at Colliers Existing retail properties offer ideal locations Suburban shopping centres and retail parks are particularly well suited to drone operations. Their locations provide access to densely populated residential areas while avoiding many of the obstacles associated with high-rise urban environments. Several US projects demonstrate the potential. Amazon is developing launch areas of approximately 1,860 square metres in the car parks of its distribution centres around Chicago, with an expected delivery radius of 12 kilometres. DoorDash and Wing have launched services from a shopping outlet in metropolitan Atlanta, covering distances of up to 6.5 kilometres. Meanwhile, Zipline operates more than 25 public launch sites across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, handling thousands of orders daily with average flight times of around three minutes. European markets are also making progress. Irish company Manna, founded in 2019, has completed more than 250,000 commercial deliveries and operates in Ireland, Finland and Texas. Its launch stations occupy approximately five parking spaces at suburban shopping centres. Drone infrastructure does not require new construction. An unused section of a car park or the back area of an existing shopping centre may be sufficient. The important question for property owners is whether their buildings can support the necessary technical and operational requirements. Blanka Sovová The Czech Republic prepares for the next step Drone delivery in the Czech Republic is still at the pilot stage. Mall.cz conducted an early test in November 2016, flying a package 1.7 km from its distribution centre in Jirny to Zelenec in just three minutes under the supervision of the Civil Aviation Authority. Further developments followed. In 2023, Czech delivery company Dodo tested drone delivery in Budapest in cooperation with Rossmann, covering 15 km in 14 minutes. In March 2025, Aerovision opened a delivery-drone development centre at Příbram Airport. Meanwhile, foodora has been testing autonomous ground robots since December 2025, delivering orders from McDonald's restaurants within an approximately two-kilometre radius in Prague's Karlín district. If successful, the company plans to expand the service to other cities and is also testing drone deliveries abroad. The regulatory environment will play a major role in determining how quickly the technology develops. The European Commission's Drone Strategy 2.0 estimates that the European drone services market could reach EUR 14.5 billion by 2030, creating around 145,000 jobs. A key element is U-space, the EU-wide framework for managing drone traffic safely over populated areas. The Czech Republic is among the first EU countries to implement the system. Retail parks could gain a competitive advantage As drone regulations evolve and commercial operations expand, Czech shopping centres and retail parks could become important parts of the delivery infrastructure. Their existing parking areas, suburban locations and proximity to residential communities make them attractive potential launch points. Czech customers are already accustomed to fast, contactless delivery, while parcel lockers have become a familiar feature of supermarket and retail park car parks. Once drone operations become more widely permitted following the introduction of U-space, retail properties on the outskirts of cities and in suburban areas could have a significant advantage. Owners should start assessing whether their properties are suitable for drone take-off sites now. Blanka Sovová The expansion of drone delivery could therefore create a new role for retail real estate, transforming underused parking spaces into valuable last-mile logistics infrastructure.

DoorDash is adding AI-powered recommendations to its Dasher app to help experienced delivery workers decide when and where to work. The company announced the update at Dash Forward 2026 on September 30. Dashers can ask questions in their own words, such as "When and where should I dash on Friday?" The system replies with a suggested delivery window and location, for example 11:00 to 14:00 in their neighbourhood, leaving time for school pickup. DoorDash says the suggestions guarantee neither orders nor earnings, and local availability still applies. The rollout is under way across the United States, depending on account eligibility. The company also announced DashBuddy, an SMS assistant for newcomers in the United States and Canada. More than 200,000 Dashers had used it as of September 2026.

DoorDash beat revenue forecasts and investors punished it for spending more. DoorDash's net income rose 51% to $244 million, yet missed estimates by 13 cents a share, as R&D costs jumped 23% to $355 million following the $3.9 billion Deliveroo deal. DoorDash's revenue jumped 27% last quarter and the stock still got hammered, because Wall Street has decided it hates spending plans more than it loves growth. DoorDash reported third-quarter revenue of $3.45 billion on November 4, ahead of the $3.36 billion analysts had modeled. Orders climbed 21% to 776 million, beating the 770 million consensus. None of that mattered once CEO Tony Xu told investors the company plans to spend several hundred million dollars more in 2026 on platform investment and new initiatives. Shares fell as much as 20% in after-hours and premarket trading, before settling into a decline of roughly 16% to 19% over the following sessions, according to Barchart and Invezz. Net income actually rose 51% to $244 million, or 55 cents a share. That sounds like a win until you compare it with what Wall Street wanted: 68 cents a share. The 13-cent gap is the whole story here. DoorDash didn't lose money. It made more money than last year and still missed by a wide margin, because research and development costs grew 23% to $355 million in the quarter alone, and Xu said that number is about to climb further. Xu's pitch is that DoorDash needs one global technology platform instead of three separate ones. The company closed its $3.9 billion acquisition of Deliveroo on October 2, 2025, adding the UK-based delivery firm to a portfolio that already included Wolt, bought in 2022 for roughly $8.1 billion. Wolt co-founder Miki Kuusi now runs Deliveroo as CEO, and DoorDash operates in 45 markets worldwide, 30 of them in Europe. Stitching three codebases, three sets of merchant tools, and three driver-dispatch systems into one platform is not cheap, and Xu is telling investors upfront that it won't be. DoorDash also launched Dot, an autonomous delivery robot, in September. Robotics programs eat cash for years before they save any, and Dot is one more line item inside that "several hundred million dollars more." House Select Committee on China and House Homeland Security Committee gave DoorDash until August 14 to disclose every Chinese AI model it uses, after co-founder Andy Fang revealed on X that the company routes lower-level work to Moonshot AI's Kimi K2.6. It's the third company, after Airbnb and Anysphere, to face this joint congressional probe... - DoorDash using Chinese AI models - Congressional pressure on US tech companies Frankly, this is the opposite of the problem most consumer tech companies had five years ago. Back then, growth-at-all-costs was the house style: burn cash, grab share, worry about margins later. Investors cheered it. Uber lost billions for a decade before Wall Street stopped asking when it would turn a profit. Now the market has flipped, and a company that is already profitable, growing orders at 21%, and beating revenue forecasts gets sold off anyway for simply saying it intends to keep investing. Part of that is context DoorDash didn't choose. The broader market has spent 2026 nervous about AI-related capital spending across the biggest tech names, and that unease has bled into how investors read any big spending number, delivery robots or otherwise. A "several hundred million dollars more" line from Tony Xu landed in a market primed to punish exactly that kind of sentence, regardless of what it's actually funding. For founders watching from outside, the lesson isn't subtle. Being profitable no longer buys you room to spend on your own timeline. DoorDash has net income, order growth, and a revenue beat, and investors still took nearly a fifth of the company's market value off the table in days. If that's the bar now, a founder pitching aggressive reinvestment better have a very specific story for when it pays off, because "trust us, it's for the long-term platform" isn't landing the way it used to. DoorDash isn't walking any of it back. The global platform build continues, Deliveroo's integration continues, and Dot keeps rolling. Xu's bet is that the market will forgive the spending once the platform math shows up in margins. Until then, the stock is the one paying for it. Join the discussion. No replies yet. Start the discussion. Julian Lim is an entrepreneur, technology writer, and a researcher. He started JL Data Analysis after graduating from NUS in Intelligent Systems. Julian writes about technology innovations and entrepreneurship on Business Times, Asia Pacific Magazine and occasionally contributes to Startup Fortune.