The curious case of the pizza-delivering drone

Popular footage of a Mumbai eatery using a drone to home deliver pizza was staged

After Amazon announced plans to use drones to deliver goods, a little-known pizzeria in Mumbai hit the headlines for doing an emulation of the procedure early this May. The eatery, Francesco’s Pizzeria, claimed a drone delivered their pizza from their Lower Parel outlet to a customer in Worli, making the total distance of 1.5 km within ten minutes. It uploaded a video of this flight on 19 May and it became an internet sensation, with all the leading Indian and international newspapers writing about it.

It now turns out that the entire delivery-via-drone was staged, according to the Mumbai police. The police got involved because rules in India forbid anything to be flown at an altitude of over 400 feet. The laws specifically state that nothing should be flown over security establishments.

The eatery made the drone fly with the pizza box only in some spots. This was filmed and the video later edited in such a manner as to indicate a delivery had been made. A police officer from NM Joshi Marg police station, requesting anonymity, said, “They did not break any rules because they had hardly flown the drone. When we called the people from the pizza shop, they confessed how they had staged the entire delivery. Even the person shown receiving the pizza in the video was a friend of the owner’s.”

The pizzeria’s chief executive Mikhel Rajani did not reply to phone calls or messages. Ajay Patankar, senior inspector from the police station, said, “The case is almost over now. The whole thing was just a publicity stunt to get people talking about their eatery. They had not anticipated the likelihood of the police getting involved.”

The police officer adds that the drone they used was extremely rudimentary. “It could hardly even fly over 20 feet. So for the video, because the drone was so basic, they just attached a pizza box, without any pizza in it.”

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Lhendup G Bhutia

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