After a restaurant loads a meal into a drone, Elevate notifies a nearby Uber Eats driver to meet the drone at a drop-off location that is close to the customer. This is how the McDonald’s experiment worked in May.

Orders are picked up and hand delivered by an Uber Eats driver. In the future, Uber Elevate plans to enable the drones to land “safely and securely” atop parked Uber vehicles located near each delivery location, Uber said. The last leg of the delivery will still be completed by an Uber Eats driver, shown.  

The initial testing with a McDonald’s restaurant in San Diego is over. A customer, shown, reaches into the special Uber Eats packaging to get his meal, which includes Chicken McNuggets. Juniper & Ivy, a fine-dining venue featuring the food of celebrity chef Richard Blais, will be the next restaurant participating in the Uber drone test.

Juniper & Ivy will only be delivering its secret off-menu “In-N-Haute” burger during the Uber drone test. The fine-dining venue has never done food delivery before and does not plan to beyond this program “to maintain the integrity of the food at Juniper & Ivy,” a representative said.

The “In-N-Haute” burger, shown, is priced at $21 at Juniper & Ivy. The off-menu item is made with a custom blend of fatty proteins including ground chuck, brisket and short rib. The burger is only available in very limited quantities each night. Juniper & Ivy will only be offering a small number of burgers via the drone program per night, a company representative said.

Uber said testing is being done in high-density urban areas, where most people do not have backyards or areas outside of their home where a drone can safely land.  Data from the two-year testing phase, which includes other drone companies throughout the U.S., will be used to build FAA guidelines for safely integrating drones into the national airspace.