Food by drones?
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From pizza delivery to emergency aid, are autonomous aircraft the future?
Ruth Alexander looks into whether drones are a feasible alternative to delivery drivers and traditional air drops.
We hear how fast food and groceries are being delivered into suburban back gardens in Helsinki and Dublin and to a waterside collection point in Hong Kong. Is this technology something we might see everywhere soon? Ruth looks at its advantages and limitations and finds out how drones are carrying essential food to remote communities in Madagascar.
Taking part were Danny Vincent, BBC Hong Kong reporter, Ville Lepalä, the CEO and co-founder of Huuva foodhall, Bobby Healy, the CEO of Manna Aero, Santanu Chakraborty, chief executive officer of Bal Raksha Bharat – Save the Children India and Hedley Tah from the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service, which is run by the World Food programme.
Produced by Rumella Dasgupta.
Image: A drone is flying against a stylised blue sky background. It is holding a white box which says Food Delivery on it in black letters. (Credit Getty Images/ sarawuth702)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. |
| 0:11.0 | The Hunger Game, a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. |
| 0:16.0 | It's been an incredible story with these drugs. |
| 0:18.1 | The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:21.2 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:26.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to fix. |
| 0:32.3 | The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:40.1 | It's a pretty magical moment when you really think that the future is here. |
| 0:47.2 | Food falling from the sky. Once a fantasy, it's now a reality in some parts of the world, |
| 0:53.5 | where drones are dropping off hot meals |
| 0:56.2 | and sweet treats. It's a lot of fun, particularly for kids, to see the drone flying over |
| 1:01.9 | your house with the flashing lights and delivering a product. So some tourists are now |
| 1:06.3 | looking at the box and in my mill. Thousands of kilometres away, that same technology is providing aid in places previously |
| 1:16.2 | impossible to reach. |
| 1:17.9 | The idea of seeing food dropping from the sky was just unbelievable for some of them. |
| 1:24.0 | This is the food chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander, and in this episode, |
| 1:29.7 | we're exploring the potential for drones to change the future of food delivery and even save lives. |
| 1:40.2 | One of China's leading food delivery companies has set up a small-scale drone service, |
| 1:46.1 | and my colleague Danny Vincent has been trying it out. |
| 1:49.5 | So I'm about to try to download an app. It's called Keater Drone, and I'm going to buy a mill on this. |
| 1:57.8 | It's going to be delivered by drone flying across Hong Kong and then I'm going to pick |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.