Lowe's home improvement store
Customers shop at a Lowe's home improvement store on May 20, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. Getty Images

Lowe's has started testing drone delivery for customers who need small home improvement supplies quickly, giving eligible shoppers another way to get forgotten project essentials without leaving their home or job site.

The pilot is live at a company store in Matthews, North Carolina, and uses drones operated by Alphabet-owned Wing, with orders placed through DoorDash, Lowe's said Thursday. The retailer described the service as the first drone delivery program offered by a home improvement chain.

Eligible customers will see drone delivery as an option in the DoorDash app and can shop through a dedicated "Lowe's by Drone" storefront. The initial assortment includes hand tools, paint products and household items such as soap, tape, all-purpose cleaner and batteries, while Wing's drones currently carry orders weighing about 2.5 pounds per flight, Lowe's said.

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The company is positioning the service around a familiar problem for both do-it-yourself customers and professional contractors: getting partway through a project and realizing that a small but necessary item is missing.

"Drone delivery fits perfectly because this was one of the friction points," Lowe's Chief Information and Artificial Intelligence Officer Seemantini Godbole told CNBC in an exclusive interview. She said customers can continue a project without leaving their home or job site to pick up a forgotten item.

The pilot currently gives customers access to more than 100 products, with deliveries available in as little as 20 minutes. The drones operate within roughly five miles of the Matthews store.

Godbole said Lowe's teams are closely monitoring the pilot and gathering feedback from store employees and DoorDash as the service is tested. She told CNBC that the company did not want to adopt "technology for the sake of tech," but instead wanted the service to address a specific problem for customers.

The Lowe's launch builds on drone operations that DoorDash and Wing already have in the Charlotte area. The companies introduced drone delivery there in May 2025, initially allowing eligible customers within about four miles of The Arboretum Shopping Center to order restaurant meals and other items through DoorDash, DoorDash said at the time.

DoorDash and Wing first began working together on drone delivery in Australia in 2022 before expanding the partnership into the United States. Their U.S. rollout began in Christiansburg, Virginia, where qualifying DoorDash orders could be delivered by Wing aircraft, typically in 30 minutes or less, the company said.

The companies have since expanded into additional markets, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte and metro Atlanta. DoorDash said this year that the partnership had completed tens of thousands of deliveries across those markets.

Wing has also been expanding a separate partnership with Walmart. The companies said in January that drone delivery would be added to another 150 Walmart stores over the following year, creating a network of more than 270 delivery locations and reaching more than 40 million Americans.

That expansion includes major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Miami, along with markets already announced in Houston, Orlando, Tampa and Charlotte, Wing said. The Alphabet unit said its most frequent Walmart drone customers were placing orders several times a week.

Meanwhile, Amazon is pursuing its own drone delivery expansion through Prime Air. The company said in August that the service was operating from 11 U.S. locations across 10 metro areas and was expected to reach nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of 2026. Prime Air offers eligible items weighing up to five pounds in as little as 30 minutes, Amazon said.

Commercial drone delivery in the United States remains subject to federal aviation requirements. Operators carrying another party's property for compensation beyond visual line of sight must hold Part 135 certification and meet additional FAA requirements, including airspace authorization and applicable exemptions or waivers, the Federal Aviation Administration says.

Wing was the first drone operator to receive FAA authority to conduct package delivery under Part 135, receiving its initial air carrier certification in 2019. The FAA said the company later expanded its authority and continued commercial operations through federal drone-integration programs.