After trial video teasers, Manna Drone Delivery launches in Dublin

Confirming suspicions reported by DroneDJ last week citing video captures of Manna Drone Delivery UAVs transporting orders to people in Dublin’s Blanchardstown neighborhood, the startup has officially announced the launch of services in the 100,000-household area, as well as its first big restaurant client in the operation.

Irrepressible Manna CEO Bobby Healy announced the company had signed on Mexican burrito bar chain Boojum in a social media post concurrent with the startup releasing a communiqué on the official launch of drone deliveries in Blanchardstown. Though the video footage of company craft providing what were apparently test-run services last week offered pretty clear indication something was up, the release made it official the startup had gone live to a potential 100,000 households in the capital.

If Healy’s development plans for Manna’s domestic market haven’t changed, the launch in Blanchardstown will likely be progressively scaled across Dublin, followed by services spreading drone deliveries throughout Ireland from there. 

The country’s accommodating aviation and business expansion regulation should facilitate that accelerated expansion, which Healy told a local tech publication had already begun with Manna UAV serving 400 homes in the first, unofficial week of trial operation.

Apparently word – and video – of that initial action in Blanchardstown served to stoke potential client interest in the service, which aims to quickly serve between 400 and 1,000 people each day.

“People are *driving* up to the new Manna base in Dublin to ask us to enable their addresses for drone delivery,” Healy posted on the social media platform most people still call Twitter because Elon Musk is clueless. “Never seen anything like this for pent-up demand of a product. It’s nuts.” 

Healy also reposted news that the Manna Drone Delivery app had reached the top download spot of its category in Ireland, ahead of Just Eat and Deliveroo. 

The recruitment of Boojum should be an asset in the effort to build on Manna’s previous, 35,000-household drone delivery Balbriggan market north of Dublin, and launch across the teeming capital itself and beyond.

Founded even farther north in Belfast in 2007, Boojum has become a popular youth and college crowd favorite with its lively menu variety and colorful in-store feel customers can now get in their homes. David Maxwell, the chain’s managing director, says the style, ambition, and functionality of Manna’s drone delivery push match Boojum’s own ideas about scaling.

“Innovation is a core part of Boojum’s culture and has been since the early days of pioneering the Mexican dining market in Ireland,” Maxwell said. “As we grow, we’re always looking for ways to improve our offering and continue to delight our customers. What better way to take this to the next level than to partner with Manna Drone Delivery.”

In addition to broadening its new drone activities in Dublin, Manna will continue working with its US partners in developing the operation launched last year in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.