DoorDash expands COVID-19 relief efforts; the move comes as delivery orders during the pandemic have grown from 3% of all restaurant orders to 7%, according to The NPD Group
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DoorDash is expanding its product line to include e-commerce solutions to help restaurants as they enter the next era of COVID-19, including an online ordering platform for direct delivery and pickup.
Dubbed DoorDash Storefront, the new platform is aimed at roughly 40% of DoorDash restaurant partners that currently don’t offer online ordering through their website. Launching in July, Storefront allows restaurants to retain valuable consumer data as orders will be made directly through a restaurant’s branded website.
“Our goal is to provide these restaurants, many of them small, independent businesses, with a solution to continue adapting through this challenging time, driving incremental sales and reaching new customers through their own channels,” DoorDash said in a blog post released Thursday.
DoorDash did not reveal the cost of Storefront, only stating that there’s a one-time set up fee, along with a monthly software fee and a flat delivery fee per order. But the delivery company is waiving those costs for local restaurants (five or fewer locations) through the end of 2020.
For restaurants that don’t want to manage their own e-commerce program, DoorDash is introducing DoorDash Weblinks. The plug-and-play program is designed to let DoorDash manage a restaurant’s digital ordering experience. Restaurants must have “an established digital presence” to sign up for the service.
Consumers clicking on delivery from a restaurant’s website will then be redirected to that restaurant’s page on the DoorDash marketplace. Standard commission fees apply on completed orders. DoorDash, however, is offering 0% commission to restaurants with five or fewer locations on all weblink orders through the end of 2020.
As part of this Main Street Strong initiative, DoorDash also said it is extending its Saturday free delivery promotion through June.
The promotion, which has been ongoing for two months, waives the delivery fee on all orders from local restaurants every Saturday. Since it started at the onset of the pandemic, DoorDash said the program has generated more than one million incremental deliveries for restaurants.
With pickup orders surging during the pandemic, DoorDash is offering all DashPass subscribers 10% off pickup orders in June. Consumers who pay $9.99 a month for DashPass receive free delivery from participating restaurants. Restaurants who want to be part of DashPass pay for the service as part of their bundled commission structure.
DoorDash is expanding its restaurant services amid chatter that Uber, the parent company of Uber Eats, might buy Grubhub. If a merger occurred, the No. 1 delivery player would lose its market share dominance in the highly competitive delivery space.
According to the latest data from ecommerce research firm Edison Trends, DoorDash has dominated the delivery space for more than a year. The company’s market share in April, based on transactions, was 45%, ahead of Uber Eats (28%) and Grubhub (17%).
Since the onset of the pandemic, DoorDash has directed most of its relief to small independent restaurants because they are “the most at risk of going out of business,” Tom Pickett, the company’s new chief revenue officer, told Nation’s Restaurant News in an exclusive interview earlier this week.
The company says it has invested $120 million in helping independent restaurants during the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, delivery represented 3% of all restaurant orders. It’s now grown to 7% of orders, according to the latest market research from The NPD Group.
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