NJ spent months freaking out about drones — now they’re delivering your dinner

Remember when all of New Jersey lost its mind over drones?

It was just a little over a year ago. Every Ring doorbell video, every neighborhood Facebook group, every guy standing in his driveway in Howell was convinced the skies had been taken over by something — surveillance drones, military drones, car-sized drones hovering silently over the cul-de-sac. The hysteria spread fast. The governor got asked about it. Cable news picked it up. And somewhere out there, people were genuinely afraid to look up.

I wasn't buying it then, and I'm still not.

One night, in the thick of it all, a friend and I drove out to an open field to see what all the fuss was about. We stood there, scanning the sky. And you know what we saw? A guy — a real live human being — flying a small recreational drone at a local park. And beyond him? Planes. Just planes. At different altitudes, with blinking lights, doing exactly what planes do.

What the NJ drone panic actually was

The whole episode was a perfect storm of neighborhood paranoia, Ring app culture, and a media cycle that was happy to keep the campfire going. And just this week, we got a fresh reminder of how that cycle works. ABC News ran a breaking news post claiming the FBI had warned California police departments that Iran was planning to retaliate against the U.S. by launching drone strikes on the West Coast. It spread fast. People panicked.

Then the White House pushed back hard. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called on ABC to retract the story immediately, pointing out that the entire report was based on a single unverified tip — and that the FBI alert itself used the word "unverified," a word ABC News had quietly left out. ABC has since updated its story with an editor's note acknowledging the intelligence was unverified. The White House's position was blunt: no such threat from Iran exists, and it never did.

Sound familiar? It should. We've been here before — right here in Jersey. A scary drone story, a lot of alarmed neighbors, and then… nothing. Just noise.

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Grubhub's drone delivery pilot in Green Brook, NJ

So when I saw the actual drone story worth paying attention to this week, I appreciated the contrast. Starting March 18, Grubhub is launching New Jersey's first commercial drone food delivery program in Somerset County. Working with a company called Dexa — one of only four in the country with FAA-certified delivery drones — they're running a three-month pilot out of the Wonder restaurant on Route 22 in Green Brook. If you live within 2.5 miles of that location, you can order through the Grubhub app and have your food delivered by drone. No surcharge beyond the standard delivery fee. And early estimates put your food at your door in roughly four minutes.

Four minutes. That's not a typo.

Wonder is a multi-restaurant concept where you can mix and match from about 15 different food brands, all prepared from one location. The whole model was practically designed for something like this. You order, they prep, a drone delivers it to your yard via a tether system, and it's done before you've finished whatever you were watching.

If you want to see it before the launch, Grubhub and Dexa are hosting a public demo at the Green Brook location on March 16 at noon and 4 p.m., with a rain date of March 17.

This is what drones are actually for

No surveillance. No geopolitical intrigue. No breathless breaking news alerts at 10 p.m. Just your dinner — or a late-night snack — delivered by a small aircraft following an approved flight path.

New Jersey spent months staring at the sky looking for something to be afraid of at night. Turns out, the only thing worth watching for up there is your food coming in for a landing.