Lakemaid Beer Drone
The drone being tested by Lakemaid Beers brewery in Wisconsin to delivery orders to customers while out ice-fishing. Businesswire

Last month we saw Amazon pull off something of a marketing coup by announcing it was planning on using drones to delivery packages to customers within minutes of them placing their order.

That stunt was designed to get as much exposure as possible for the online retailer ahead of the Christmas shopping period, and the announcement by a brewery based in Wisconsin that it is testing the use of drones to deliver beer to its customers, may be much of the same.

Lakemaid Beers - whose tagline is "Great Fishermen need Great Beer" - posted a video on YouTube showing a drone delivering a case of beer to ice-fishermen on a nearby lake.

The video shows a shop assistant taking a call before writing down co-ordinates for the delivery, attaching the case of beer to a drone and setting it off over the ice-covered lake, where it is delivered to the customer.

"Amazon faces a lot of obstacles," Lakemaid Beer Company's president Jack Supple told the Fort Mill Times.

"Dense urban locations present a host of problems to drone delivery. But our tests are on vast, wide-open frozen lakes free of trees and power lines. Our drone can fly as the crow flies, straight to our target, based on GPS coordinates provided by an ice angler. Fish houses are very uniform in height, so we can fly lower than FAA limits, too."

Regulations

Supple said that several tests on mid-sized lakes have already proven successful and the company is now looking to test the range of its drones on larger lakes.

Related

However thirsty ice-fishers may be waiting a while for the buzz of a drone to indicate their beer is on the way, as the Federal Aviation Authority in the US restricts commercial use of small drones and isn't expected to issue new regulations until next year.

Another issue which will have to be addressed of course is the verifying if customers are of legal drinking age.