DoorDash Drive

DoorDash Drive is an on demand delivery service letting merchants offer delivery from their own website or app using DoorDash drivers, without running a fleet, and covering restaurants, grocery, alcohol, convenience, flower shops, pet stores and retail.

Separating the courier network from the marketplace is the entire idea and it is a meaningful distinction. On the DoorDash marketplace the customer belongs to DoorDash, is shown competitors alongside the order and costs the merchant a marketplace commission. With Drive the order originates on the merchant's own channel and DoorDash supplies only the driver, so the customer relationship and the data stay with the merchant.

That is the right trade for anyone who has already built demand. A business with its own ordering site is paying for the hardest part of delivery, which is not driving but customer acquisition, and hiring drivers for unpredictable demand is where independent delivery operations usually fail: a fleet sized for Friday night is idle on Tuesday.

Serving grocery, alcohol, hemp, convenience, flowers, pet supplies and general retail rather than only restaurants matters because those categories have real handling requirements, and alcohol in particular carries age verification duties the courier network has to be built to satisfy. Pricing is quoted per merchant by business type rather than published as a rate.