- 2 hours ago
Keller Cliffton, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, is helping transform delivery through autonomous drone technology. What started with delivering life-saving medical supplies in Rwanda has expanded into restaurant delivery, helping operators reach more customers faster.
Watch now to learn about autonomous delivery, reaching customers farther away, and the future of restaurant logistics.
Restaurant Influencers is sponsored by:
• Toast All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://entm.ag/ToastRI
• PepsiCo Foodservice: https://entm.ag/RIPepsico
Watch now to learn about autonomous delivery, reaching customers farther away, and the future of restaurant logistics.
Restaurant Influencers is sponsored by:
• Toast All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://entm.ag/ToastRI
• PepsiCo Foodservice: https://entm.ag/RIPepsico
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NewsTranscript
00:00If you look at across all of food delivery in the U.S., which is around like 5.5 billion
00:04deliveries a year using cars and motorcycles to deliver stuff, if you were to just extend the buying behavior that
00:09we're observing in Dallas to the rest of the U.S., there would be 55 billion instant deliveries a year.
00:15Why are we not funding this?
00:25Welcome to Restaurant Influencers, presented by Entrepreneur.
00:28I'm your host, Sean Walchef.
00:29This is a Cali BBQ Media production in life, in the restaurant business, and in the new creator economy.
00:35We learn through lessons and stories, and we have a great story.
00:38We are at the Food On Demand Conference 2026 to talk about Zipline and autonomous delivery.
00:45Keller Clifton, CEO, co-founder.
00:48Welcome to the show.
00:49Thank you for having me.
00:50So usually when I get the privilege of interviewing keynote speakers, it's when they come offstage, so I get to
00:57rap.
00:57You're actually about to go onstage, so this is a treat for us.
01:02Let's start with why does the technology that saves lives in Rwanda work for restaurants?
01:14Yeah, you know, when we were starting Zipline about 12 years ago, our backgrounds were in robotics, AI, automation, and
01:24it seemed obvious to us that someone was going to create a new kind of logistic system that would be
01:2910 times as fast, half the cost, zero emission.
01:34But there was one problem, which is that it was illegal to do this in the U.S.
01:37So I was like talking to investors, you know, I'm sure you've had plenty of, you know, meetings with investors
01:42are hard enough to not, and they'd be like, is this illegal in the U.S.?
01:45I'd be like, yes, it is.
01:47And so this is the weird thing about how we started the company.
01:49We had to go outside the U.S. to get started.
01:51And we thought, you know, our best chance to get regulatory approval from any country would be to focus on
01:56life-saving use cases, use cases that were so important that no one would deny us the opportunity to kind
02:05of show what was possible.
02:07And so the initial contract we signed was with the government of Rwanda, as you mentioned, to deliver blood transfusions.
02:13That system, over the course of about eight years, grew and grew.
02:17You know, today it's expanded to almost 5,000 hospitals and health facilities.
02:21Incredible.
02:21It delivers 75% of the national blood supply of Rwanda outside the capital city, soon to be the same
02:27in Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d'Ivoire.
02:31It's estimated that Zipline saves between 10,000 and 12,000 lives a year.
02:34And the University of Pennsylvania just published this study showing a 51% reduction in maternal mortality at the hospitals.
02:4151%?
02:41Yeah.
02:42So half as many moms dying in childbirth.
02:44Wow.
02:44And, you know, had you told us when we were getting started, we were going to achieve a 5%
02:47reduction, we would have been like, hell yes, this is so important.
02:51You know, this is totally worth 10 years of our lives.
02:53So that was really phase one of the company operating outside the U.S. because it was illegal in the
02:57U.S.
02:58Showing that this technology could save lives, showing that people could rely on it day in and day out,
03:02and it could operate at national scale, fully integrated with an air traffic control system, in all weather, you know,
03:11day in and day out.
03:12So that was phase one.
03:14A couple years ago, we really started to get up, you know, there was a huge amount, there was a
03:19couple things happening.
03:20One is that Zipline was engaging closely with the FAA and it was becoming clear that this was about to
03:25become possible in the U.S.
03:27The other thing was, and by the way, that came from the fact that we had 100 million plus commercial
03:33autonomous miles and zero safety incidents.
03:35Oh, wow.
03:35So it really helped that we had, this had become the largest commercial autonomous system on earth outside the U
03:40.S.
03:40So it made it easier for the FAA and the U.S. to say, hey, okay, the technology is definitely
03:44ready for prime time, it's safe, and we have the data that we need to prove that.
03:48But the other thing was that we started to hear from a lot of the biggest companies in the U
03:52.S. that they wanted access to autonomous logistics.
03:54They thought, hey, if we could do teleportation from our restaurants or from our retail stores directly to homes, that
04:01would be really game-changing for our businesses.
04:03And so we started forming these enterprise partnerships in the U.S. and launched in January of last year.
04:09That's amazing.
04:10Can you share a little bit about what did those brands that are more on the bleeding edge, cutting edge,
04:15that see the problem, what are they getting right versus the market?
04:19Because if we look, we're here in 2026, you're about to give the keynote.
04:23I think the rate of adoption is just going to be insane.
04:27That's why we come to these shows, to learn about what's actually happening.
04:31I have barbecue restaurants in San Diego.
04:33We open in a very difficult location.
04:35They tell you location, we're in a tough location.
04:37But I truly believe in my soul that the 3 million people that are in San Diego deserve to get
04:43great slow-smoked briskets, slow-smoked ribs.
04:46And what is preventing that from happening?
04:48Well, it's a logistics problem.
04:49Yeah, totally.
04:51Yeah, well said.
04:52I mean, I think by far the biggest thing here is just that it's like understanding the technology curve.
05:00Because you talk to a lot of people and they'll be like, oh, drone delivery, but that's BS because Jeff
05:06Bezos was on 60 Minutes talking about drone delivery 10 years ago, and it hasn't gone anywhere.
05:10Yes.
05:11And Amazon, it hasn't worked.
05:12Yeah.
05:12Despite them spending whatever, how many billions of dollars trying to make it work.
05:16And so I think that what people kind of fail to understand, like these technology curves, typically you'll have the
05:20like, you know, it's the hype cycle.
05:23Yes.
05:23So in the first two years, people will see like a demonstration of a new technology.
05:27And they'll be like, oh my God, this is going to the moon.
05:29You know, a lot of companies get created.
05:32A lot of companies go like this instantly.
05:34Valuations go way up.
05:35And then there's the inevitable crash a year later where it's like, wait a minute, this is going to be
05:39way harder than we were expecting.
05:41Valuations go to zero.
05:42Lots of companies go out of business.
05:43We saw exactly this with, you know, autonomous cars, for example, right, in 2017.
05:49And a similar thing has happened here where it's like after the crash is when the 10 years of hard
05:53work occurs to actually make the technology reliable and scalable and cost effective and safe.
06:02And so all of these things, you know, it's taken about 10 years for autonomous cars.
06:08This is true.
06:09For autonomous logistics, like what Zipline does, drone delivery.
06:12This is also true.
06:13And I think that the key thing from an adoption perspective is I think a lot of the brands that
06:18we're working with are thinking about that curve and realizing like, wow, we're now there.
06:22Like the technology is working.
06:24It is scalable.
06:25It is cost effective.
06:26And customers super love it.
06:28And so as an example, you know, we're in Dallas right now.
06:31Dallas was the first city that Zipline launched in in the U.S.
06:34We have now scaled up to 25 different charging sites.
06:39We're operating in 25 different like municipalities in Dallas, surveying huge number of homes across the metro.
06:45And the customer adoption has been insane.
06:50I mean, the service grew about 15% week over week most weeks last year.
06:53So we went from, yeah, I mean, it's, it's.
06:56Didn't you stop advertising?
06:57Yeah, we did.
06:58Really?
06:59Yeah, you heard that story.
06:59I did hear that story.
07:00Yeah, and in fact, like exactly.
07:01We were so panicked about capacity, right?
07:03Because Zipline is having to like deploy capacity.
07:05We're deploying aircraft.
07:06We're deploying charging sites.
07:08Sort of like Tesla to superchargers in a metro.
07:11You know, we were so freaked out that we actually, yeah, we turned off all the marketing in the metro.
07:15And it did basically nothing.
07:16It's continued to grow.
07:18You know, I met a grandma a couple weeks ago who's ordered 350 times from Zipline in the last year.
07:24Come on.
07:24Super user.
07:25She's 80 years old.
07:26Yeah.
07:26And she's like using her iPhone, you know, clicking around, ordering everything.
07:29Double click the side of her phone, Face ID, Apple Pay.
07:31She's like, it's on its way.
07:33It'll be here in 10 minutes.
07:34I think what we're, you know, the things we're observing, especially for restaurants are a few, I mean, a few
07:40things.
07:40One, when you can deliver something in two to four minutes, the quality of the product is so much higher.
07:46Like people are having an in-restaurant experience at home.
07:49Yeah.
07:50And people are so used to receiving like cold, gross food via delivery that, you know, a couple customers have
07:56actually told us that they accidentally burned their tongues on the food that we delivered to them.
07:59Cause they're, they're so used to being cold.
08:01Like someone doesn't even think about like, Hey, this just came out of the oven two, two minutes ago.
08:05Um, the other big thing is just, I think there's, there's a lot of like fee exhaustion and customers, you
08:11know, going to these big platforms.
08:12That are using a 4,000 pound gas combustion vehicle driven by a human to deliver something to you that
08:18weighs three pounds, 45 minutes later, you know, and you're getting charged a service fee, a rush delivery fee, an
08:25extended range fee, a regulatory response fee plus tip.
08:30Yeah.
08:30I think there's just this sense of like, this is not scalable and it doesn't feel like a good customer
08:36experience or, um, relationship with that, with that platform.
08:41And then finally I would say, um, right, maybe two, two additional things.
08:46One is that like in the same way that when people experience Waymo for the first time, there's this feeling
08:50of like, wow, this is like predictable and safe.
08:54It's unbelievable that I didn't fully appreciate.
08:57Yeah, exactly.
08:57I literally went in a Waymo for restaurant leadership conference for the first time.
09:01Yeah.
09:01And I, it's such, it's an out of body experience where you feel technology.
09:06Like you feel your, your whole world shifting because I had been in Ubers the week before with my family
09:11and nothing against Uber.
09:13It was just the driver itself was having a bad day.
09:16Right.
09:16And like he was rushed to get to the airport when I was in the Waymo.
09:20I've never felt more safe, which is so weird.
09:23No one was, no one was driving the vehicle.
09:25Yeah.
09:26Before people are nervous.
09:27They're like, I don't know, you know, is I'm going to get into a car that, you know, is driving
09:30itself.
09:31And then it's pretty much like one experience and you're like, wow, this is much safer and people really value
09:36safety.
09:37I mean, it's kind of an obvious thing, but I mean, you know, one of our board members, for example,
09:41was telling me that he has a 15 year old son.
09:44He, he, he sends his son everywhere in Waymo's alone.
09:46He would never, he would never be willing to do that in, uh, you know, in, in, um, like a
09:52non-autonomous vehicle.
09:53And, and he just knows both that like the, the drive itself is so much safer.
09:58Plus you eliminate all of that kind of like, you know, long tail of safety incidents that happens when you
10:03have a lot of humans who may or may, you know, background checks and all this kind of stuff.
10:06And so similar thing is happening in delivery, right?
10:09If you're, if you're like 14 year old daughter is like home alone at night and placing an order on
10:14the apps and like some person is showing up and delivering and, you know, uh, there's just so many things
10:21that obviously are going on in a parent's head about like, what are all the things that could go wrong
10:24in this scenario?
10:25Being able to make deliveries directly to the backyard of a home in a way that is private, is reliable,
10:30and it is a hundred percent safe and predictable is a big deal.
10:34Last thing is that, um, there's actually a huge like market expansion because, um, for any given restaurant, if you're
10:42using cars to deliver, you typically don't want to go more than three miles.
10:45Zipline, the overall system is designed to deliver out to a 10 mile service radius.
10:50And because of, you know, pi r squared, the way the area of a circle works, if you triple the
10:55radius, you're about 10 X-ing the number of people who are reachable via instant delivery from that restaurant.
11:00So amazing.
11:01If you take your restaurant in San Diego.
11:02It's a big, it's a big deal for us.
11:03Yeah.
11:03Like delivery radius is a huge deal for a restaurant like ours.
11:06So you take your restaurant in San Diego, you guys have like this amazing, you know, really hit brand that
11:10probably there are a lot of people who'd love to, who'd love to.
11:13But they don't want to get into a car and drive 45 minutes.
11:15Right.
11:15And they're not going to see it.
11:16They're not going to see it in most of the platforms because you're only seeing inventory.
11:19That's typically three to four miles away.
11:21And so being able to 10 X, the number of customers who are reachable via instant delivery from any given
11:25restaurant is, you know, can be game changing.
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12:41Let's keep that momentum going.
12:46It's also what you talked about from point of purchase.
12:49For someone like us that slow smokes our meat overnight, 14 hours to cook brisket, what we've been doing, and
12:56we obviously have a media company.
12:57We teach storytelling to restaurant operators, is the technology is getting to the point where I can be going live
13:02on Instagram.
13:03I can be going live on TikTok, I can be going live on YouTube, and there's a button that someone
13:09could order from Zipline, and literally the drone, instead of us cooking it, waiting for the shop to open, waiting
13:16for the order to get placed, waiting for the delivery driver, now that's all hold, hot and hold.
13:20Instead, we could literally say, oh, you'd like that rack of ribs coming off?
13:24Okay, well, let's get the drone here, and let's take that rack that you actually want, and then get it
13:29delivered immediately.
13:30That's meat off the smoker immediately.
13:32Yeah.
13:33There's no, like, it's literally the best quality possible.
13:35Exactly.
13:36You can have an in-restaurant experience at home.
13:38I think it's really game-changing, and by the way, you know, the biggest thing, you asked me that question
13:42about adoption, right now, the biggest thing we do is we just bring people to Dallas.
13:46Because there are all of these restaurants all over Dallas.
13:49Just come to Dallas.
13:50Yeah.
13:50We're going to a Dallas restaurant this afternoon.
13:52Are you?
13:53Yeah, we're going to put the video.
13:54Are you guys going to get to go, and you're going to go get to see Zipline?
13:55Absolutely.
13:55We're going to go see Zipline.
13:56Yeah, I'm glad.
13:57Your team set it up.
13:58Because seeing is believing.
13:59Yeah, show me.
14:00It still feels like sci-fi in most people's minds.
14:02They're like, I don't know, drone delivery.
14:04Like, that's, you know, it's sci-fi.
14:06That's still five, ten years away.
14:07And when you get to go visit some of these sites that you're going to get to go to, you're
14:10like, wow.
14:11I mean, it's totally normal.
14:13Yes.
14:13A lot of these restaurants, you know, drone delivery is now more than 50% of all deliveries happening from
14:19the restaurants.
14:19Unbelievable.
14:20Including large brands.
14:21The service is, like, beloved by customers.
14:24And I think one of the big things is we're seeing a totally different ordering behavior.
14:28Customers are ordering a lot more when they know that it is reliable, predictable, and the quality of the product
14:34is just so much higher.
14:36We're seeing a lot of customers who are ordering every day.
14:39Some customers order multiple times a day.
14:41And so I think the crazy realization here is if you look at across all of food delivery in the
14:45U.S., which is around, like, 5.5 billion deliveries a year.
14:49Really?
14:49Wow.
14:50This is, you know, the way the system is currently built, using cars and motorcycles to deliver stuff.
14:56If you were to just extend the buying behavior that we're observing in Dallas to the rest of the U
15:00.S., there would be 55 billion instant deliveries a year, not five.
15:05Really?
15:05Yeah.
15:06And I think another way to think about this is that, you know, the percentage of, like, total meals eaten
15:10in the U.S. that come from restaurants is still, like, surprisingly low.
15:14And the percentage of meals that are delivered is significantly lower than that.
15:18And so I think it's just that there's this realization that, like, if you make delivery feel more like teleportation,
15:24people, and you can make it more cost effective so people don't feel like they're having to pay double the,
15:30you know, the retail price of the food to get it delivered, people will, unsurprisingly, use that service a lot
15:36more.
15:36I think in many cases you can kind of make cooking optional, which is already sort of what we see
15:40happening with Gen Z on the apps to the end with.
15:43So I think that these are just like, yeah, these are sort of crazy profound realizations of just how big
15:48the shift might be.
15:49And I think that restaurants that position themselves to take advantage of this kind of new, you know, instant delivery,
15:57teleportation-like logistics, autonomous delivery, restaurants that build the capacity to meet that increasing demand, I think are going to
16:04benefit in big ways.
16:06Did you know that Toast powers over 140,000 restaurants across the United States, Canada, and UK?
16:14It's an incredible company.
16:15I'm on the Toast Customer Advisory Board.
16:17They are proud sponsors of this show, Restaurant Influencers.
16:20We couldn't do it without their support.
16:22They power our barbecue restaurants in San Diego.
16:25So if you have questions about Toast, if you're thinking about bringing Toast on to be your primary technology partner
16:31at your restaurants, please reach out to me.
16:33I'm happy to get a local Toast representative to take care of you.
16:37You can reach me at Sean P. Welchef on Instagram.
16:41Once again, thank you to Toast for believing in the power of technology, the power of storytelling, the power of
16:46hospitality.
16:48Back to the show.
16:49What does that look like for restaurants that are currently operating?
16:52What kind of point of sales integrations do we have?
16:54How does it work?
16:56It's really simple.
16:57I mean, Zipline already works with a lot of different partners like Olo and Checkmate.
17:00We also do one-off integrations with some of the larger brands that we work with.
17:03We work with some of the biggest brands in the U.S., like Chipotle and many others.
17:08And so integration is pretty simple.
17:10But the way that we actually pick up, this is like a big advantage of the overall way we've designed
17:18the network, which is like there is no construction, no permitting, really no infrastructure required for the restaurants.
17:25We just show up and we give you a mailbox.
17:26So the drone doesn't come inside to the restaurant.
17:28Yeah, exactly.
17:29And you don't have to leave the restaurant.
17:30Amazing.
17:30There's no like, whoa, we've got to walk out into the parking lot and like load some kind of a
17:34vehicle.
17:36Really, you know, the way we integrate is we install these mailboxes in just a couple hours at any location.
17:43And this mailbox, usually these mailboxes can actually be loaded from inside the store.
17:47So just think of it like another drive-thru.
17:49Yep.
17:50And so you're getting orders and you can just walk, you know, someone at a Chipotle, for example, they're just
17:55going down the line.
17:56They, you know, make the customer's order, they put it in a bag, they walk two steps, pass it through
18:01the magical portal in the wall or the drive-thru, however you want to think about it.
18:05Once it's loaded into the Dropbox, you know, a zipline will show up, collect it, and then deliver it directly
18:11to the customer's homes.
18:12And there's no human in the loop after the thing is placed into the Dropbox.
18:17It's incredible.
18:18Yeah.
18:18So the advantage of this is that there's really not that much planning required.
18:22You know, a restaurant doesn't have to be an expert in autonomous logistics.
18:25They don't have to know anything about drones, and they don't have to disrupt anything about how the restaurant operates.
18:30A lot of these partners, like Chipotle, for example, they have massive throughput in these restaurants.
18:34And so they need a system that can do anywhere from, you know, 200 to 500 deliveries a day.
18:39And that's how we're kind of designing these systems.
18:41How many mailboxes do they need?
18:43You know, it depends.
18:45Like, actually, so a partner like Walmart, who we also work with, you know, for Walmart super centers, we'll do
18:50three Dropboxes.
18:51Okay.
18:51Because you want, like, to have at least two active at any time, and you also want to be redundant.
18:56If for whatever reason one needs maintenance, the other two are capable of serving the entirety of demand.
19:02But again, like, we can size up to, like, a thousand deliveries a day, which we haven't yet met a
19:07restaurant that needs that level of volume.
19:09But some of our retail partners do.
19:11It's amazing.
19:11So I've heard you talk about the virality of the actual delivery, meaning it's a great marketing tool for user
19:18-generated content.
19:19But the novelty wears off.
19:21Very fast.
19:22And it becomes necessity.
19:24Yeah.
19:24Can you talk about that?
19:25Yeah.
19:25I think, you know, it probably helps us for, like, the first delivery.
19:29It's like, oh, my gosh.
19:30Wow, it's so cool.
19:31Like, it's this autonomous aircraft delivering, like, from the sky.
19:34I mean, it definitely looks crazy.
19:36But I would say, you know, again, that novelty wears off in, like, maximum seven days.
19:42Maybe sooner.
19:43What doesn't wear off is this realization that, like, you don't have to plan as much in your life anymore.
19:49Yes.
19:50You can get whatever you want.
19:51You know, if I'm like, oh, actually, I want to cook this tonight.
19:54You can just, you know, pull out your phone, order the 8 to 12 ingredients that you need, and you
19:59can have them delivered five minutes later.
20:01It allows you to eat healthier in a lot of cases.
20:03You can cook healthier.
20:04You can get better produce.
20:08You know, there's just so many things that kind of, like, change about customers' behavior when you realize that you
20:12have access to teleportation.
20:14Just like you can, you know, it can be here in five minutes.
20:18I think that's really the biggest, you know, that's the biggest thing.
20:22You know, it is the case that in some of these cities in Dallas, we've seen this insane adoption.
20:28Like, there are some municipalities in Dallas where more than 50% of homes are ordering from Zipline.
20:32Wow.
20:33One is over 60%.
20:34And we weren't doing very much marketing.
20:37I think what we really realized is it is a bit similar to Waymo where, like, there was a point
20:41where Waymo got to a level of adoption in San Francisco where it's like every other car you saw on
20:47the street was a Waymo.
20:47And the system kind of markets itself because you're like, wow, this is, like, clearly happening.
20:52And people are using this service all the time.
20:54And so it's kind of like just billboards traveling up and down the street.
20:57You're like, this must be a thing.
20:58You know, Zipline, we're extremely quiet for the neighborhoods we serve, but especially at night, you can, like, see the
21:04aircraft going back and forth, kind of crisscrossing this guy.
21:06And I think that especially in a lot of these smaller towns, there's just an intense level of love for
21:12the service.
21:13Interestingly, you know, we all sort of serve a lot of, like, nursing homes.
21:17We deliver to, you know, fire departments.
21:18We deliver to police departments.
21:19We kind of tend to focus on a lot of use cases that a whole neighborhood is super excited about.
21:25Like the fact that, you know, a lot of these elderly folks who might be wheelchair bound and are immobile,
21:29but who, in fact, live on their phones.
21:31This is the thing I didn't appreciate.
21:33You would have thought maybe these people would be, like, kind of technology challenged.
21:36Please tell me, yes, they're all, like, everyone's on their phone.
21:39It doesn't matter.
21:40It's a problem.
21:40I think a lot of these people in these nursing homes are just, like, doom scrolling on their phones, like,
21:44nonstop.
21:44But, you know, they are perfectly capable of, like, using an iPhone and doing Apple Pay to, like, order stuff.
21:50And think about how game-changing that is, especially for someone who maybe doesn't have a car or isn't as
21:53mobile.
21:53Absolutely.
21:53Or you need to get your medicines.
21:54Totally.
21:55So, you know, a lot of these use cases have just become, like, ingrained in these neighborhoods and communities we
22:00serve.
22:01And you kind of get to a level of adoption where, you know, even if you weren't using it before,
22:06you're watching your neighbor, like, constantly getting these autonomous deliveries to their backyards.
22:10It kind of, the system kind of sells itself.
22:12So, for me, I'm really excited that you're here giving the keynote at the Food on Demand conference.
22:16It's one of the most important conferences all year for restaurant people, for technology people.
22:21I'm waiting for you to be keynoting at the National Restaurant Show.
22:26So, what's going to make that happen in this next year so that in 2027, you're the one that's up
22:32there talking about, hey, we knew this was coming.
22:34We saw the growth rate.
22:35But it's all about the adoption.
22:36It's all about more cities getting involved, more restaurants speaking up, more small businesses speaking up, saying, hey, we want
22:42this because the economics make sense.
22:44First of all, why do the economics make sense?
22:46Well, I think, you know, the economics is really probably the easiest thing to understand.
22:50Like, it's actually insane when you think we are using a 4,000-pound gas combustion vehicle driven by a
22:57human to go drive to a restaurant, park in the middle of traffic, human runs in, you know, yells at
23:05the restaurant owner, why isn't it ready?
23:06Or, like, what's going on?
23:07You know, gets it, gets back into the car, drives out into the suburbs to deliver something to you that
23:12weighs, again, like, on average, you know, three to five pounds.
23:14Like, I think it's, you know, it's more obvious to state, like, that is so difficult to make the unit
23:20economics work for that.
23:21And it's not that, like, companies are greedy.
23:23They're just trying really hard to make an economic model work that I just described.
23:28And it is very obvious.
23:31And obviously that's all built on an inflationary cost model that relies on humans and gasoline.
23:36The cost of humans and the cost of gasoline is going up over time.
23:39And that's a good thing.
23:40Like, I'm a humanist.
23:41Like, humans should be paid more over time, not less.
23:45But ultimately, like, these models, you know, especially to expand to 50 billion instant deliveries in the U.S., there
23:50are not enough humans in the United States to do that.
23:53The only way to do it is through AI and robotics and using a 50-pound vehicle that is electric
24:00and autonomous.
24:02It should be very obvious why the unit economics of those kinds of systems are going to be where you
24:08do not have a human in the loop.
24:09So, these vehicles, you know, Zipline already has individual aircraft that have flown more than a million commercial autonomous miles.
24:15Wow.
24:15Yeah, that often strikes people because they're always like, oh, drones, they must be kind of like exquisite, expensive technology
24:21that probably, like, breaks a lot.
24:22I mean, I don't have a car that's gone more than 500,000 miles.
24:26So, having, you know, these aircraft that are passing, you know, these crazies, these kind of extraordinary, like, life cycle
24:35limits kind of gives you some intuition for, like, whoa.
24:38So, actually, these systems last a long time, they're very reliable, they're much less expensive just because, you know, the
24:44vehicle is 1% of the mass and it doesn't have a human that needs to operate it the entire
24:50time.
24:51To do something game-changing, to do it revolutionary, you talked about the 10 years where it's exciting, a lot
24:58of people are investing, and then there's the fall-off.
25:00Yeah.
25:02Over the last 10 years, can you describe a challenging point where you fell down?
25:08I mean, as an entrepreneur, you were talking right before we started recording, like, you have a million things going
25:13on.
25:13Yeah.
25:13It's part of the job that we signed up for, but we learned by getting back up.
25:18Can you share a story where it was some of the most challenging times?
25:21I mean, yeah, there are so many, you know, I don't know which one you would pick from.
25:26You know, we have a joke at Zipline that, you know, almost everybody who's been at the company more than,
25:31like, two or three years has been through a WIFIO moment.
25:33Have you heard of WIFIO moments?
25:34No, please, tell me.
25:35Is this, like, a family friend?
25:36Yeah, no, you're fine.
25:37It's for entrepreneurs.
25:39All right, okay.
25:39It's a business owner.
25:40WIFIO is WFIO.
25:40We're fucked.
25:41It's over.
25:42Okay?
25:43So, WIFIO moments.
25:44We're fucked.
25:44It's over.
25:45Come on.
25:45And we often are like, oh, this is a WIFIO moment.
25:48This is it.
25:49Yeah.
25:49So, you know, and we have them, like, not infrequently, I would say.
25:53Oh, fantastic.
25:53I just learned something.
25:54See, you always stay learning.
25:55WIFIO moments.
25:56WIFIO moments.
25:57And so it's like, which one do you want me to pick from?
25:59You know, I can pick lots of WIFIO moments.
25:59The most recent one.
26:00Pick the most recent one.
26:01Oh, I mean, the most recent one was, like, you know, last week.
26:03I mean, you know, I'll pick one from the summer, which is that, like, you know, we, you know, as
26:12we were, we only launched in Dallas in April.
26:16And then the system started to scale really fast, almost, like, out of control growth.
26:21It's kind of like, you know, like a nuclear reactor where you don't have the control rods in or something.
26:25It's like, oh, my God.
26:26There's no restrictor player.
26:26It's about to go critical.
26:29And so we turned off all the marketing.
26:31And even that wasn't enough.
26:32The system was continuing.
26:33And the maintenance intervals, this was a brand new technology that we were deploying, brand new aircraft that we were
26:37deploying into the field.
26:38We didn't understand the maintenance intervals well enough.
26:40And we weren't keeping up with growth.
26:42And so we had to, like, you know, it was clear.
26:44I mean, we were suffering really low uptime, very low availability of service.
26:50We were having to constantly throttle customers.
26:51Kind of like the example of the Twitter fail whale, if you remember that in 2015.
26:55Like, you're just having to turn away a lot of customers you can't serve because, like, the infrastructure isn't scaling.
26:59And we were totally panicking.
27:00And so, yeah, we shut off the marketing.
27:02We got most engineers onto planes and flew them all to Dallas and had everybody working, like, nights and weekends
27:08in the maintenance hub.
27:09We set up tents outside, sort of inspired by, like, the Tesla Model 3 debacle.
27:13Like, tents are great.
27:14You know, if you need more space, just, like, put a tent outside in the parking lot and you get
27:17shit done.
27:18And the teams were working late into the night, like, 1 a.m., 2 a.m., just to try to,
27:22you know, to try to handle that.
27:25And that was, you know, and then only a few months before that, it had been, like, all these kind
27:28of, like, tariff supply chain nightmares.
27:31You know, we were just starting to spin up this new aircraft at the same time that all these tariffs
27:35were announced by the U.S. government.
27:36It kind of threw supply chains into chaos.
27:40And so it's really, like, you know, scaling a hardware company through hyperscale is, like, not for the faint of
27:47heart.
27:48It's, like, you know, crisis after crisis.
27:50It just depends where the bottleneck is.
27:52But the bottlenecks are, like, they are hard constraints.
27:55Yes.
27:55Like, if you do not have the aircraft to serve a customer, the customer will not be served.
27:59Yes.
28:00And, you know, if you do not have, of the 700 unique components that needs to go into an aircraft,
28:0543 major sub-assemblies, if one component is missing, you will not build the aircraft.
28:09It will not come off the end of the manufacturing line.
28:11And so I think, you know, it demands, like, a level of, like, organization and rigor.
28:15And it's, like, you know, it definitely takes years off your life because it's not, again, it's your only as
28:22strong as, like, your weakest component.
28:24Or you're only moving as fast as your slowest constraint.
28:28And the slowest constraint is changing every month.
28:31Total addressable market.
28:32Like, when we look at the globe, how soon before every single country has restaurants delivering autonomously?
28:40I think it's happening really fast.
28:42You know, Zipline is, we're already an international company.
28:45We operate in eight countries today.
28:49You know, every country, my guess is that it looks a lot like the expansion of cell phone networks, actually.
28:55And I think what a lot of people don't understand about cell phone networks is actually their deployment was much
28:59faster and much smoother in developing countries
29:01than it was even in some of, like, the richest countries on Earth because the need was higher.
29:06And you were sort of, like, leapfrogging over landlines.
29:08And, you know, there's actually a big advantage of not having a default.
29:12You're not competing against a default.
29:13You're just leapfrogging straight to the next generation thing.
29:17So, yeah, when you go and use a lot of cell networks in Africa, they are better performing even than
29:22cell networks in the U.S.
29:25And so I think that, you know, autonomous logistics is almost even more required for developing markets where you have
29:33a lot of other things going on.
29:34I mean, if you've spent time in, like, Lagos or Abidjan or Manila or Jakarta, I mean, these countries have,
29:39like, the most insane traffic.
29:41Like, if you think the traffic in Dallas is bad.
29:43And they also have fast-growing populations.
29:46So the U.S., like, we don't have, like, a population that is growing exponentially.
29:52A lot of these countries do.
29:53This combination of, like, already insanely bad traffic plus, like, lack of public infrastructure plus a growing population equals, like,
30:03you know, it's either catastrophe or you have to have a dramatically new way of solving these problems.
30:08And so I actually think, like, the need is arguably even higher outside the U.S. than it is in
30:12the U.S.
30:14But, yeah, I think that, you know, we're – my guess is that you'll have access to this in every
30:23major metro in the U.S. in the next two years.
30:26And, you know, Zipline is going to be focused on expanding internationally at the same time that we're expanding in
30:31the U.S.
30:31Amazing.
30:32I just want to give a shout-out to Toast, our primary technology partner, for believing in this show.
30:36Since 2022, we've been putting on this show, helping restaurants with all of the technology to give us the opportunity
30:44to have interviews like this.
30:45It's – seriously, it's game-changing.
30:47The last question that I have for you is your LinkedIn profile photo.
30:54Are you still doing that kind of stuff?
30:56Because there are too many people that are depending on you to be pulling that kind of stuff off.
31:01You're a professional rock climber.
31:03Yeah.
31:03That's a pretty epic photo.
31:05Is that – that's totally legit?
31:06That's not AI-generated?
31:07No, it's not AI-generated.
31:09People do ask about that photo.
31:12Yeah.
31:13I mean, you know, I grew up climbing.
31:15Do you miss it?
31:16Do you still do it?
31:17Yeah, definitely.
31:18It's still a big part of my life.
31:19In fact, I mean, until I had – I now have three kids under four years old.
31:24Oh, wow.
31:24Three under four.
31:25Yeah.
31:26And so, like – but even, you know, we've taken our four- and two-year-old daughters to the
31:31climbing gym.
31:31They love it.
31:32That's cool.
31:32It's just a little harder.
31:33Like, we haven't been quite in full hardcore training mode.
31:35But, like, you know, it's been a huge part of my life.
31:38You know, climbing is a big part of kind of our family.
31:43You know, I was – like, I met my wife in a climbing gym.
31:46We were engaged on the side of a rock climbing cliff.
31:48No way.
31:48Cool.
31:49Really?
31:50Yeah.
31:50That's awesome.
31:52So, you know, we love climbing.
31:53I think climbing is – there's a lot in common with entrepreneurship.
31:56You know, it's about, like, finding these big, impossible-looking challenges and being willing to fail 100 times before you
32:03succeed once.
32:05And so, yeah.
32:06I mean, I think climbing really taught me to be comfortable failing.
32:09And, like, you can fall on your face 10 times or 100 times before you succeed.
32:14And also by being inspired by, like, really crazy, impossible-looking challenges.
32:20That's totally the vibe of, like, climbing at a high level.
32:22And that's also usually what entrepreneurship feels like.
32:26But, yeah.
32:27You know, we – it's definitely something I want, you know, my kids to get to experience.
32:32And climbing is also really awesome in that it is kind of like the great equalizer between boys and girls.
32:37Like, you know, as a girl dad, you know, girls and women can climb at, like, an insanely high level
32:45because it's all about strength to weight ratio.
32:47So, it's different, I think, than, like, you know, maybe football or basketball or some of these sports where there's,
32:51like, a really big gender difference.
32:52There's actually, like, almost no gender difference in climbing.
32:55Is there a point – what does it look like for Zipline at the top of the climb?
33:01You know, it's – the funny thing is, like, I was just remembering – this morning, I was just remembering
33:09this conversation trying to, like, close this important aerodynamics kind of controls engineer who we were trying to close in,
33:16like, 2014.
33:16We were trying to convince him to come join Zipline.
33:19He was working for this bigger, fancier company at the time.
33:21And I remember trying to convince him that Zipline was going to be an $100 million company.
33:26And he was, like, so completely not buying it.
33:30He was, like – it was so preposterous to him.
33:34You know, and honestly, I didn't know if I believed it myself.
33:36You know, I was kind of, like, trying to believe in the dream, but you're like, I don't know, $100
33:39million seems like a lot of money.
33:40Could Zipline ever be worth that much money?
33:43And, you know, I guess I just – like, the scope and scale of our ambition has increased.
33:50Like, every time we succeed, it's all about, like, if you've ever been on a really, you know, difficult mountaineering
33:55trip where it's all about these fall summits.
33:57You're like, we just have to get there.
33:58And then you get there and you're like, oh, but now there's this, like, way more crazy inspiring mountain that's
34:02still above us.
34:03And so, you know, at first, I think we thought, you know, success would be can we build a system
34:09at national scale that's saving tens of thousands of lives a year?
34:11Like, we did that.
34:12And then, you know, Zipline was like, wow, now we actually think we need to build this, like, full-on
34:17autonomous logistic system for Earth.
34:19And the first logistic system that can serve all people equally.
34:22And now Zipline is on its way to achieving that.
34:24I think that that will be one of the largest companies on Earth if that goal is achieved.
34:28But we're also now starting to ask ourselves lots of questions about what comes even after that.
34:34Like, what are the kinds of, you know, future technologies that we could build that would, you know, save lives,
34:41transform the way that people live, totally, you know, change the way that neighborhoods look and feel.
34:48There are a lot of things about transportation that are going to change over the next five to ten years.
34:52I think AI and robotics is going to have a huge impact.
34:55And, you know, there are a lot of, there's basically endless opportunity.
35:01And so, I think that's the feeling.
35:04It's like the scope and scale of ambition just increases because now we have more resources available.
35:09You know, we, the company is worth a lot more than the $100 million that we were talking about.
35:15Over $7 billion.
35:16Yeah.
35:17You know, we have, so we have all these opportunities now that we can start to look at and start
35:19to think, wow, well, like, and, and, and even now we're starting to think, well, what would have to be
35:23true for us to, you know, increase the size of the company by another hundred X or a thousand X.
35:28And, and, and, you know, building great products that people love that really change the way people live their lives
35:33that can save lives.
35:36It's exciting.
35:36It's fun.
35:37And I, it's hard to imagine a better time to be alive to get to work on like, you know,
35:42where we're living in a time where small teams that are, you know, super entrepreneurial and willing to take risks,
35:48willing to try new things.
35:49Can have like a massive lever and move the entire world.
35:53Yeah.
35:53This was not true 50 years ago or a hundred years ago.
35:56Oh, we appreciate you guys for watching, for listening.
35:58And you can reach out to me anytime at Sean P.
36:01Walchef LinkedIn, Instagram, always the fastest.
36:04It's Zipline.
36:05I can't thank you enough for taking the time.
36:07I know how busy you are.
36:08Food on demand conference, put it on your schedule.
36:10Be sure to come out to this event.
36:11It's phenomenal.
36:12Thank you to Jared and the team for allowing us the time to set up this interview.
36:16I can't wait to see what you guys are building.
36:17I can't wait to go today.
36:19We're going to go today and actually see Zipline in action at restaurants.
36:23We'll put a link to that video into the show notes.
36:26Thank you guys for watching.
36:27As always, stay curious.
36:28Get involved and don't be afraid to ask for help.
36:30We'll catch you next episode.
36:35Thank you for listening.
36:36If you've made it this long, you are part of the community.
36:39You're part of the tribe.
36:40We can't do this alone.
36:41We started, no one was listening.
36:43Now we have a community of digital hospitality leaders all over the globe.
36:47Please check out our new series called Restaurant Technology Substack.
36:51It's a Substack newsletter.
36:52It's free.
36:53It's some of our deep work on the best technology for restaurants.
36:56Also go to YouTube and subscribe to Cali BBQ Media, Cali BBQ Media on YouTube.
37:02We've been putting out a lot of new original content.
37:05Hopefully you guys like that content.
37:07If you want to work with us, go to betheshow.media.
37:10We show up all over the United States, some international countries.
37:13We would love to work with you and your growing brand on digital storytelling.
37:17You can reach out to me anytime at Sean P. Welchef on Instagram.
37:21I'm weirdly available.
37:22Stay curious.
37:23Get involved.
37:24Don't be afraid to ask for help.
37:25We'll catch you next episode.
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