Introduction

Background Context

Doordash (and it’s competitors like UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates, etc.) is quickly becoming one of the hottest services fueling the convenience economy. Fresh off raising $250 million in a new round of funding — putting its valuation at $4 billion dollars — last August, DoorDash has its goals set on expanding into new cities, partnering with restaurants, and eventually becoming a logistics provider for the entire food production process. While its moonshot investments in self-driving cars and drones are still a ways off, it’s current bread-and-butter is still food-delivery. Therefore, it’s immediate goals to improve customer satisfaction and drive growth come from reducing these two factors: order wait times and delivery prices.

My Experience with DoorDash

To be honest, DoorDash isn’t very popular where I go to school which is in St. Louis. When I do order food, I usually use Postmates because of the aggressive marketing they have been doing around my university, and they often have “Postmates Credit and Delivery” specials which are especially appealing for a poor college student like myself. DoorDash has been responding with their own marketing push and their cheap delivery prices are hard for their competitors to beat.

As a consumer, I’m pretty brand agnostic when it comes to food delivery services. I don’t really care what logo is on the delivery tote bag as long as the food comes to me quickly and at a reasonable cost. I imagine that most people feel the same so that’s one of the reasons the food delivery space is so competitive.

The Business-Side

I’ve been following the rise of online delivery for the past year, but it was after reading a fascinating piece about a talk Tony Xu, the CEO of DoorDash, gave where he broke down the type of consumers who used the service and the complex infrastructure they set up to meet the constituency's needs that I came to appreciate just how many moving parts have to come together for my cheesy garlic bites to arrive on time to my apartment. Essentially, there are three main markets DoorDash must serve simultaneously: consumers (the hungry people ordering food), merchants (who provide the food), and Dashers (delivery people who are the link between you getting your ravioli in 5 minutes vs. 50 minutes). Therefore, the challenge DoorDash face are 3-sided, and all 3 markets have to be served simultaneously for the company to achieve critical mass in an area and gain a competitive advantage. They form the pillars of every feature the company implements so even if one aspect is weak the foundation will topple.

When examining the company, I initially looked at the consumer side because that is what most of us are familiar with when we open up the DoorDash app. It’s the company’s consumer-facing product, so it’s gotten the most attention to detail in terms of having a clean and simple-to-navigate UI, thoughtful micro-interactions, and an attractive overall aesthetic.