DoorDash Is Outgrowing Food Delivery. Local Stores Are Moving Into the App
DoorDash wants to deliver the outfit as well as the meal. New retail partnerships, doorstep returns, delivery drones, and restaurant software show how far the company’s ambitions stretch beyond getting dinner to your door.
Retailers join the delivery lineup
DoorDash is adding clothing, shoes, and beauty products through partnerships with Timberland and Vans, Anthropologie, Macy’s, and The North Face. The additions follow deals with Barnes & Noble, Gap, and Kohl’s earlier this year.
Macy’s plans to offer two-hour delivery from ~360 of its 430 stores this fall. Its chief customer and digital officer, Max Magni, says the partnership is intended to reach a broader audience, putting the retailer’s merchandise directly inside DoorDash’s app.
That brings delivery platforms further into competition with Amazon and Walmart, which have helped make fast shipping a standard expectation. Uber is expanding its retail partnerships too, with Costco offering fast delivery through both companies across the US.
Returns get a doorstep pickup
Clothing brings a problem that dinner orders rarely face: customers need a convenient way to send purchases back. DoorDash’s Dasher Returns charges a flat $7.99 fee to collect eligible retail purchases, with pickup available in as little as 30 minutes.
The service is operating in select cities, with a November rollout expected nationwide. Returns are processed at the store, where eligible merchandise can go back on sale, and customers receive refunds within days, though timing varies.
DoorDash’s retail pitch relies on inventory already sitting in nearby stores. Shanna Prevé, the company’s chief revenue officer, described how that gives retailers another way to use their existing locations:
“For retailers, it means turning the stores they already have into a growth channel, not a warehouse three states away.”
DoorDash
Handling returns extends DoorDash’s role beyond the purchase itself and addresses a practical obstacle to buying clothes through the app. Whether shoppers come back will matter more than the number of brands joining the platform.
Drones promise a faster delivery route
DoorDash is also preparing to move some deliveries off the road. Its new DoorDash Air aircraft will begin pilot deliveries in Northern California with partners including Chipotle and Popeyes, extending a network that already includes ground robots and third-party autonomous delivery partners.
The company estimates that ~80% of orders from its typical restaurant mix are small and light enough for the aircraft. Actual eligibility is narrower because weather, flight range, and routing also determine which deliveries make sense by air.
Initial tests averaged less than 5 minutes from restaurant to doorstep, according to DoorDash. Those results come from a limited sample, so the pilot will help establish how the system performs beyond those early tests.
Software aims to bring customers back
While drones address the physical journey, DoorDash’s new DashOS platform connects what happens before and after an order. It brings together restaurant ordering, reservations, loyalty, customer information, and marketing so operators can recognize the same customer across delivery and dine-in visits.
The company’s research found that 40% of surveyed US restaurant operators manage 4–5 separate technology systems. DashOS aims to connect those interactions, helping restaurants understand which customers return and where to focus their marketing.
DoorDash says customers enrolled in its loyalty program order 1.8x as often as those who have not joined. SevenRooms marketing tools using aggregated DoorDash data also helped restaurants generate more than $150M in sales from January through August, according to company figures.
Beginning in 2027, DoorDash plans to expand access to SevenRooms products for 80K+ restaurants using systems including Clover, Qu, and Deliverect. That would extend its restaurant business further into reservations, direct ordering, and customer loyalty.
The announcements give customers more reasons to open DoorDash and merchants more ways to reach them. The investment case depends on whether those extra visits become repeat orders and better margins once the cost of serving them is counted.
