Los Angeles — Matternet, the developer of the world’s leading urban drone delivery system, is partnering with Dave’s Hot Chicken to launch a drone delivery pilot, a first for the fast-casual leader. The service will debut in Northridge, a Los Angeles suburb, where eligible residents will be able to order Dave’s Hot Chicken through the Dave’s app and receive it directly to their homes via Matternet’s autonomous M2 drones — arriving hot, fresh and fast.
“Each day, more than 10 million food deliveries move through our cities in 2-ton cars, adding traffic and pollution,” says Andreas Raptopoulos, founder and CEO of Matternet. “Drones will replace millions of those trips — delivering meals faster, cleaner and with no human contact beyond the restaurant and the customer. Our partnership with Dave’s shows the future of food delivery.”
Orders will be prepared at Dave’s Northridge Reseda location and delivered to approved homes in Northridge. The partnership builds on Matternet’s successful home delivery service in Silicon Valley, which has been operating since October 2024.
“Innovation is part of our DNA at Dave’s Hot Chicken,” says Leon Davoyan, chief technology officer of Dave’s Hot Chicken. “By using drones, we’re delivering our food in a way that takes it straight from the kitchen to our loyal customers’ hands.”
As the fastest-growing restaurant brand in the U.S., Dave’s Hot Chicken is redefining what’s possible in fast casual — now becoming one of the first national brands to test drone delivery.
For Matternet, this partnership marks another milestone in building the infrastructure for next-generation logistics, expanding from healthcare into food and retail to transform how goods move through cities.
Matternet is the leading developer of commercial drone delivery systems for urban and suburban environments. To date, Matternet technology has enabled tens of thousands of commercial drone flights over dense urban and suburban environments in the U.S. and Europe. For more information, visit: https://www.matternet.com/.
Founded in 2017, Dave’s Hot Chicken’s first brick-and-mortar restaurant was located in East Hollywood. In 2019, the team struck a deal with Wetzel’s Pretzels’ co-founder and former CEO, Bill Phelps, and movie producer John Davis to begin franchising the Dave’s Hot Chicken concept throughout the U.S. and beyond. The company has sold the rights to more than 1,020 franchise locations in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Canada and will open 70-plus locations this year.
SOURCE: Matternet