In China, McDonald’s will deliver your Big Mac by drone

Another day, another point of proof that people in China live in the future. Shanghai residents can now order from McDonald’s and have it delivered by air to kiosks installed in the city’s waterfront neighborhood. You just need to order using Meituan—China’s dominant food-delivery, retail, and local services super-app—and, in a matter of minutes, a drone will zoom by with the classic paper bag with the logo of the golden arches, loaded with Big Macs, McNuggets, or whatever else you want from the fast-food chain. China has spent nearly a decade normalizing drones and robots as delivery infrastructure, not novelty. They call it “low-altitude economy.” Meituan has been flying paying customers’ meals since 2017, expanding city by city while regulators built the rules around it rather than the other way around. What’s new today isn’t the concept—it’s the brand. This is the first time McDonald’s has gotten its own dedicated drone corridor, rather than just being one menu among many on somebody else’s flight path. The air link—a 1.93-mile-long hop—went live last week across West Bund, the waterfront district of Xuhui in Shanghai, connecting a McDonald’s kitchen in Xuhui to a cluster of d…