Papa Johns pilots drone sandwich delivery in Charlotte with Wing

Papa Johns has started using drones to deliver sandwiches in Charlotte, turning a neighborhood pilot into a test of how much restaurant delivery can be reorganized around software, packaging and dispatch instead of drivers. The first direct partnership between Wing and a national restaurant brand is limited to a curated sandwich menu in Indian Trail, near Sun Valley Commons, with orders initially placed through the Wing app.

For restaurant workers, the important part is not the drone itself. It is the chain of tasks that now has to work without a human driver at the end of it: the kitchen has to pack the right sandwich, seal it correctly, time it so it is ready when the drone is, and handle customer problems when the handoff is no longer face to face. That means more pressure on managers and shift leaders to coordinate order flow, more attention to packaging accuracy, and a different kind of issue resolution when a customer says the order was late, damaged or missing something. Papa Johns is also planning to connect the pilot more deeply to its own app and to Lou AI, its digital pizza assistant, which would push even more of that coordination into the company’s first-party systems.

The pilot launched on May 11, 2026 and is running with Papa Johns Oven Toasted Sandwiches, including Philly Cheesesteak, Chicken Bacon Ranch and Steak & Mushroom. Kevin Vasconi, Papa Johns’ chief digital and technology officer, said the company is “fundamentally shifting” customer interaction on digital platforms. Heather Rivera, Wing’s chief business officer, said the partnership is meant to define a new blueprint for how agentic commerce and operational design shape food delivery. That language points to a wider shift in restaurant labor, where the work is less about taking a phone order and more about keeping a digital fulfillment system from breaking down.

Papa Johns is not making this bet from scratch. The company already has PJX, an internal innovation team created with Google Cloud, and it has said that the broader AI partnership is meant to increase order frequency, raise ticket size, reduce customer service costs and improve customer satisfaction. Lou AI is already tied into Google Cloud’s Food Ordering agent, which suggests the drone test is part of a larger push to make off-premise sales more automated from cart to curb.

The Charlotte experiment also sits inside a growing drone-delivery footprint. Wing and DoorDash launched drone service in Charlotte on May 14, 2025 near The Arboretum Shopping Center, then later extended Charlotte-area hours to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. after FAA approval for after-sunset flights. Wing received FAA air carrier certification in 2019, and KQED reported its drones can carry up to 1.5 kilograms, or 3.3 pounds. Papa Johns, meanwhile, said in its May 2026 investor materials that it has more than 6,000 restaurants in about 50 countries and territories, and that first-quarter global systemwide restaurant sales were $1.20 billion, down 3% from a year earlier. In that kind of slowdown, delivery experiments are never just about speed. They are about who does the work, where it happens and how much of it stays visible to the people making the food.