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	|NAME=''DoorDash''		|NAME=''DoorDash''
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	|TYPE= Food Delivery App		|TYPE= Food Delivery App
	|LOGO=DoorDash.png		|LOGO=DoorDash.png

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Revision as of 18:15, 11 February 2021

DoorDash

"DoorDash App" [url text] Type Food Delivery App Launch Date 2013 Status Active Product Line product Platform iOS, Android, Web Website DoorDash Website

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oordash is a food delivery application founded in 2013 by Tony Xu in Palo Alto. DoorDash allows users to order food and grocery products from local businesses on iPhone, Android and web platforms. As the largest and fastest growing 3rd party delivery service, DoorDash has surpassed its competitors, such as GrubHub and Uber eats. Individuals can sign up to be delivery drivers, or "Dashers", for DoorDash. Users are able to order food from partner restaurants in their area, which is then delivered to the user by Dashers. DoorDash also offers pickup options for user orders.

History

Tony Xu founded DoorDash in 2013^[1]., when it was initially known as Palo Alto Delivery. Xu and a team of his classmates at Stanford had been working with a local store manager on a separate startup project which had ultimately failed. The store manager had reached out to them at the end of their partnership with the problem they were facing, an inability to handle the logistics of their delivery service. Xu took on this new challenge with his student team and began building an application to streamline the delivery process for local businesses which would eventually become DoorDash. Initial employees of DoorDash played roles on the business side, but were also required to deliver for the company for their initial week of employment. After growing in popularity in Palo Alto, the name was switched from Palo Alto Delivery to DoorDash to reflect the companies expansion.

DoorDash stood out from its initial competition through the hiring of its own Dashers rather than relying on individual restaurants to utilize their employees. This allowed users of DoorDash to order from restaurants that did not have their own delivery system set up, offering more food options to users. This advantage allowed DoorDash to take a lead in the market. DoorDash has received many rounds of venture-capital funding reaching more than $1 Billion^[2], allowing them to expand beyond just food delivery and enter into autonomous vehicle development. DoorDash plans to utilize, Drones, autonomous vehicles, and other technologies in the future alongside Dashers to optimize the delivery process.

Usage

The primary method of usage for DoorDash is through the company's mobile app. Users are able to order goods via pick up or delivery options. The door dash order process is 4 steps long, and vendor availability is based on what is available within a certain proximity to the user's address.

Choose Order

Users begin the ordering process by first selecting the category of item they would like to order. Categories include convenience, fast food, burgers, desserts, Asian, Mexican, and others. After a category has been selected, vendors available within the area and can supply the user with their item are shown. Users can then sort these vendors by different variables like distance and price. Once a vendor is chosen, users can then pick the items from the vendor that they would like to order.

Payment
After a user has completed selection of their items, they are then instructed to pay for their order. Total cost of an order includes the price of the user's items, a DoorDash service fee (11% of an order), tax, a $2.00 order fee if a total comes to less than $10.00, and a delivery charge.

Order Tracking

After a user places and pays for their order, they are shown a timeline of their order process and can see what stage the Dasher assigned to their order is at if they had selected delivery rather than pickup. If pickup is chosen, users are shown an estimated timeline of when their order will be available for pickup. DoorDash's driver facing software used by Dashers allows them to accept orders whenever they have downtime. DoorDash provides users with the ability to track the order location so as to have an estimate of time of delivery.

Delivery
Once an order is received by a customer, users are requested to rate their Dasher and tip them for their service on a 5-star scale. If a Dasher receives an overall ranking below 4.2 stars, they are not allowed to deliver for DoorDash. Previously, DoorDash would keep a portion of Dasher tips, but after controversy, they have changed the policy to allow dashers to keep 100% of their tips.

Ethical Concerns

Data Breach
DoorDash was the victim of a cyber attack in late 2019^[3], exposing the data of 4.9 million of its users. Included within this data breach were user's and partner's hashed passwords, addresses, phone numbers, and limited forms of payment information. The breach occurred in May 2019, but was not detected for about 5 months. Stolen account information is frequently used to make orders from users accounts and delivered to a 3rd party.

Tipped Wage
DoorDash Dashers are contract employees who aren't protected by the US minimum wage or receive benefits like health care. Many dashers rely primarily on tips to support themselves. However, DoorDash's earlier business practices involved taking a portion of Dasher's tips as revenue ^[4], leading many Dashers to ask to be tipped in cash rather than through the app In early 2019, numerous publications reported on the fact that DoorDash was taking a percentage of Dasher tips. This was controversial, resulting in a clash action lawsuit from consumers arguing that DoorDash's tipping policy was "materially false" ^[5], and DoorDash has since announced a change in their policy.

Restaurants Added Without Consent
DoorDash, and other services like it, have a history of adding restaurants to their in-app list of available vendors without first contacting the restaurants ^[6]. This leads to confusion when Dashers arrive at restaurants to pickup a user's DoorDash order, and no system for processing and delivering DoorDash orders has been put in place by these restaurants. This leads to cancelled orders, refunded customers, and potential for a negative reputation to be built up for the restaurant by failing to provide DoorDash users with their orders. This is at no fault of the restaurants, but instead stems from DoorDash failing to contact and build partnerships with restaurants before listing them on their service. Additionally, DoorDash takes up to 30% of the commission from each order, taking money from small business restaurants.

References