Doordash bezorgt alles/ veel meer dan fastfood en boodschappen.
DoorDash Now Delivers Much More Than Food. What It Means for the Bottom Line.
Evie Liu
DoorDash is expanding a partnership with Ulta Beauty to deliver cosmetics, fragrances, and skin-care products from the retailer’s over 1,350 stores nationwide. The service was previously only available in selected areas.
The announcement is the latest step of DoorDash’s continuous push into new retail categories to broaden its business. Started as a delivery platform for restaurant food, the company launched grocery delivery in 2020 and has since expanded into alcohol, pet products, and more.
DoorDash’s grocery partners include Albertsons’ Safeway unit, Dollar General, and Walgreens Boots Alliance. Last year, it ventured into consumer electronics through a partnership with Best Buy, and added home improvement last month by partnering with Lowe’s.
Today, there are tens of thousands of non-restaurant retail stores on the DoorDash platform across North America. As of year-end 2023, one in five of the platform’s monthly active consumers had ordered from a non-restaurant category, according to the firm.
According to data from research firm M Science, DoorDash continues to grow its share of the U.S. delivery market both within its core restaurant vertical and non-restaurant verticals, notably convenience and grocery.
The quick expansion is driving strong revenue growth. In the first quarter of 2024, DoorDash sales increased 23% from a year ago. The non-restaurant category now represents a midteens share of its total orders, according to Matthew???? Goodman, senior analyst at M Science.
Still, delivery platforms have struggled to earn profit due to the high cost of driver payments and heavy marketing expenses to acquire and retain customers.
DoorDash has never been profitable except for the second quarter of 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the company scales, however, the numbers have been improving. In 2023, as revenue grew 31% from the year before, operating expenses increased just 20%.
Although DoorDash lost another $25 million in the first quarter, it’s significantly less than the $162 million loss in the year-ago quarter. Wall Street now expects the company to finally turn a profit again in the third quarter this year.
The stock has gained 74% over the past 12 months despite some recent pullback. Shares tumbled 3% in Monday trading. Rival Instacart went public last September at $30 per share, and now trades 10% above that.
The grocery-delivery business has become increasingly competitive, as not only third-party platforms like DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Technologies unit Uber Eats, but also grocers themselves bid for bigger market share.
Amazon.com recently started offering a grocery-delivery subscription for its Prime members that covers orders above $35 from Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, and some local grocery stores and retailers.