Kinda cool, until you look into the fact the food still has to go by transit from the school it’s prepared at to the airport, which is a 6 mile journey, and then does the rest by drone, which is a further 2 miles.
You’d have to think faffing about doing an additional unloading and loading, as well as take off and land would take longer than to just carry on, on the roads for the remaining 2 miles where it can quickly get back into appropriate temperature storage.
There seems no problem in driving the entire distance, it seems to be one of the main roads out of Oban and, as the picture below shows, the drone flight is the smallest part of the journey.
Why not fly the entire distance? The drone pictured is a hybrid, capable of VTOL, all of the aircraft featured on their website seem to also be vertical take-off so why do they need to use Oban Aoirport?
Looks like a waste of money by the council, but as my cousin says, “ This is what we’ve come to expect of the Scottish Government” Everything they do is a complete waste of taxpayers money. 
very practical solution… 1 meal at a time… maybe 2…
1 mile between the two locations… 2x members of staff at either end to load and unload the drone(s)
would have thought a van would have worked better… if you can’t drive because of the weather…
a) are the kids still going to be in school
b) how’s the uav going to fly… it ain’t going to fly if its raining so hard you can’t drive, and it ain’t going to fly if its so windy you can’t drive… and it shouldnt be flying if it’s too cold due to ice formation potential on the props…
seems like a first world solution to a first world problem… bring some sandwiches… worked for me…
electric van would have been “zero” emissions too (sorry zero carbon! not zero nuclear waste, forgot my political correctness!!!)
If I were designing this trial for Argyll and Bute I think I’d have probably started with a similar school for phase 1. It’s close enough, and with a good/quick/easy road connection, that if something goes wrong with a delivery by drone you aren’t leaving a school without its meals. That’s just a sensible way to start the trial. As the article says, the next phase will focus on more remote schools.
It’s easy to look on the whole project as a waste of time and money, but Argyll & Bute has some very remote schools and some of the smaller ones have no kitchen. They already rely on prepared meals being sent to them, which is dependent on an aging fleet of ferries that are prone to breaking down and are often delayed or cancelled due to sea conditions.