Lowe’s is flying painter’s tape by drone from its Matthews store, in a first for home improvement retail

A Lowe’s store in Matthews became the first home improvement store in the country to send orders out by drone on Wednesday, September 24. The Mooresville-based chain launched the pilot with Wing, the drone company owned by Alphabet, and DoorDash, whose app now carries a storefront called Lowe’s by Drone for customers within range of the Lowe’s on Matthews Township Parkway, according to the company’s announcement.

Deliveries arrive in as little as 20 minutes from the store, the company said, and each flight carries about 2.5 pounds. That rules out lumber and paint cans. It covers the things a project stops for: a screwdriver, a roll of painter’s tape, a tube of caulk, batteries, soap, all-purpose cleaner.

How the service works

The order happens entirely inside the DoorDash app. Customers whose address falls inside the delivery zone see the Lowe’s by Drone storefront automatically, Lowe’s said, and choose from more than 100 eligible products, Retail Dive reported. A Wing drone picks up the package at the store, flies to the address and lowers it on a tether to the yard or driveway. Nobody lands.

The limits are set by the aircraft. Wing’s drones carry small payloads over a radius of up to four miles from each launch site, which the company calls a nest, according to WBTV’s reporting on the network’s expansion in April. The Matthews store already had one. Wing and DoorDash have run drone delivery in the Charlotte area since May 2025, when they launched from The Arboretum Shopping Center in south Charlotte, and added nests at Northcross Shopping Center in Huntersville, Sun Valley Commons in Indian Trail and the Matthews Lowe’s this spring, reaching more than 60,000 households, WBTV reported. The restaurants that fly most often from those sites include bagel, salad and sandwich chains.

Lowe’s did not publish delivery fees, and neither of its partners has said what the service costs; the DoorDash app shows the price at checkout. The company also did not give a timeline for other stores. It described the Matthews launch as an initial pilot built on Wing and DoorDash’s existing Charlotte-area operation.

Why this store

Matthews was the practical choice. The Wing nest at the store on Matthews Township Parkway was already flying restaurant orders, so the drone side of the operation existed before Lowe’s put anything on it. The store’s trade area, south Mecklenburg and northern Union County, is dense with single-family homes with yards to land in, which drone delivery needs and apartment towers lack.

It is also home turf. Lowe’s is headquartered in Mooresville, about 40 miles north, with more than 1,750 stores, 540 branches and 120 distribution centers and about 300,000 employees, and it reported sales of more than $86 billion in its 2025 fiscal year, according to the announcement. Running the first test within an hour of headquarters keeps the engineers close.

What the executives said

Lowe’s framed the pilot as a technology story. Seemantini Godbole, the company’s chief information and AI officer, said in the release that any technology it implements is designed to eliminate friction, and that the drone pilot addresses a real project pain point. Rajiv Raghunathan, the vice president of technology, told Retail Dive the goal is to cut the extra store runs that slow a home improvement project.

The announcement tied the drones to the rest of the company’s technology push. Its AI assistant, Mylow, has answered more than 25 million customer questions since launching in 2025, Lowe’s said. The drone storefront is the physical end of the same idea: fewer trips to the store for the person halfway through a repair.

The competition

The timing is not accidental. Home Depot launched a nationwide express delivery option last month promising items in three hours or less, Retail Dive noted, and both chains already offer curbside pickup and same-day delivery. Twenty minutes by air is Lowe’s answer for the small-order customer, at least inside a four-mile circle around one store.

Drone delivery in Charlotte has moved from novelty to routine faster than most cities. A few things a Matthews or Mint Hill resident should know before the first order:

• Eligibility is by address. If the Lowe’s by Drone storefront does not appear in the DoorDash app, the home is outside the zone.
• Orders are capped at about 2.5 pounds and drawn from a list of roughly 100 items, so a full shopping list will not fly.
• The drone lowers the package on a tether to an open outdoor spot; a clear patch of yard or driveway is needed.
• Bad weather grounds the fleet, and the app will say so.
• The same store still runs ground delivery and curbside pickup for everything else.

Why it matters

Charlotte’s suburbs have become a national test market for drone delivery, and the reason is geography: wide lots, mild weather and a retailer base willing to try it. Walmart, DoorDash and now Lowe’s have all chosen this metro for early flights. The Matthews pilot is small, one store and a short list of items, but it is the first time a home improvement chain has put its products on a drone, and it happened here.

Whether it spreads depends on what the pilot shows: how many people order a single roll of tape by air, and what it costs Lowe’s to send it. We will report the fee structure when it is confirmed and any expansion to other Charlotte-area stores.

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