Dive Brief:
- DoorDash announced Monday five new grocery partnerships for on-demand delivery.
- The supermarkets that have signed on with DoorDash include Midwest chain Fresh Encounter, Stew Leonard’s, Chicagoland health food store chain Fruitful Yield, natural and organic grocer Plum Market, and Robért Fresh Market, a six-store chain in the greater New Orleans area.
- The expanding roster of supermarket partners builds on DoorDash’s continued growth of its grocery vertical.
Dive Insight:
With the new partnerships, DoorDash is growing its list of small- and medium-sized grocers across the U.S., ranging from Plum Market, which has five full-size locations in Michigan and Florida, to 50-store chain Fresh Encounter.
The tie-up with Fresh Encounter, which runs several banners such as Sack n Save and Germantown Fresh Market, marks the chain’s first partnership for third-party delivery, DoorDash said.
Several of the new grocery partners are family-owned businesses including Robért Fresh Market; Fruitful Yield, which has 11 locations in the Chicagoland area; and Stew Leonard’s, which has eight stores across Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.
All five of these grocers will be available on DashPass, DoorDash’s membership program that touts no delivery fees, reduced service fees and other benefits.
Last week, DoorDash announced new features and tools for consumers, such as redesigned search capabilities, the ability to import grocery lists and the option to add items from multiple nearby stores prior to checkout for a bundled order without extra delivery fees. The company has also linked with Bon Appétit to provide free access to shoppable recipes.
DoorDash, which launched its grocery vertical almost four years ago, has made “tremendous progress” on expanding its selection of grocery partners, from national ones like Wegmans to corner stores, CEO Tony Xu said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call at the end of October.
“[A]s customers get used to ordering groceries on DoorDash, they tend to order more items each subsequent visit. … We are increasing both the frequency as well as the spend and wallet share in terms of how consumers spend when it comes to their monthly bills on grocery,” Xu said.
In a promising sign for DoorDash, CFO Ravi Inukonda told investors that some of the new customers to the platform are ordering groceries for their first order — an indication that DoorDash is gaining a reputation beyond restaurant delivery as a place for food shopping.
