DoorDash Adds New Retailers, Texting Shopping Assistant

Source: ModernRetail, Gabriela Barkho
Photo: Courtesy of DoorDash

It’s been a busy month for DoorDash as the marketplace platform continues to expand its retail offerings and in-app tech features.

This week, DoorDash added Macy’s, Anthropologie, The North Face, Vans and Timberland to its retail marketplace. DoorDash is also launching Dasher Returns, aimed at addressing the inconvenience of returning items by coordinating a DoorDash pickup. There are also a number of AI-powered updates on the tech front. This week, the company announced a number of new tools such as Text DoorDash, an expansion of the Ask DoorDash in-app assistant designed for conversational help in browsing. The feature allows customers to place orders via simple text communication without opening the DoorDash app.

The latest news comes on the heels of DoorDash’s milestone partnership with Costco, which it announced earlier this month; Costco had been at the top of DoorDash’s wish list of new retailers to add. This month the company also expanded its Snap/EBT program by adding seven new grocers to its network. New partners include regional chains like Albertsons Market, Amigos and Boyer’s Food Markets.

The new partnerships and features are part of DoorDash’s push to build what it calls a “mall in your pocket,” as it tries to remove the friction that comes with browsing and decision-making with online shopping.

Mike Goldblatt, vp of enterprise partnerships at DoorDash, told Modern Retail the latest retail and tech tool expansions are part of the company’s continued effort to expand beyond restaurant delivery.

Goldblatt said this year’s focus is to expand DoorDash’s partnerships to service retailers and customers better, as the user’s behavior shifts from one-off convenience-geared orders toward a more routine shopping cadence.

With the Costco addition, DoorDash now has eight of the top 10 U.S. grocers on the platform. “With Costco being a club, there is material value in what they bring to their members and to the DoorDash consumer,” Goldblatt said.

“We’re really excited to bring that value and that selection to the consumer base,” Goldblatt said, noting that, prior to bringing on the warehouse club, users had been searching for it on DoorDash for years.

On the technology side, Goldblatt said that as DoorDash builds out more conversational AI shopping capabilities, it’s trying to be considerate of customers’ varying habits. “What we’re always trying to do in the app is reduce friction,” he said.

“Some consumers come to the app and just know exactly what they want at that moment, and are in and out in 25 seconds without even considering an agentic option,” said Goldblatt.

With that, DoorDash’s platform is increasingly taking into account customers’ signals from what they are buying across restaurants, grocery and retail. “Sometimes it’s just like, ‘Here is this recipe, give me all the ingredients.’ And others, it’s, ‘Give me some ideas.’”

That’s where some of this discovery becomes interesting, said Goldblatt, because the AI features help speed up the old-school routine of looking at a recipe and searching through items in the app. “That is a slow process, and you’re not going to see the high conversion that the agentic solutions do,” he said. “The basket size becomes 2X because people are getting what they want quickly.”

Even with all the AI-enabled bells and whistles, Goldblatt said value and savings continue to be a top draw for many DoorDash users, which is why programs like Snap/EBT and partners like Costco are important for attracting customers.

Three years after launching SNAP/EBT payments, DoorDash says over 4.5 million users have added their SNAP cards to DoorDash, and about 75,000 stores now accept the benefit on the platform. That has given 99% of SNAP households access to at least one participating store on DoorDash.

In-app features are also being built to cater to price-sensitive shoppers. For example, when a customer is in the process of building their cart at a particular retailer, DoorDash’s agentic assistant may give them alternatives to save money on their order by swapping one product for a different size or brand. “Sometimes it’s within a brand offering a different pack size,” Goldblatt said. In other instances, the assistant offers a private-label version that costs a little bit less.

“Affordability is so crucial that we want to surface options to the consumer and build the trust, so they know when they come to a retailer on DoorDash, they’re getting maximum value,” he said.

https://www.modernretail.co/ai-strategies/doordash-adds-new-retailers-texting-shopping-assistant