Mansi Gaur
A freelancing blogs and e-books writer who keeps you up with the trending technologies and user guides. A blogger who is currently a post-graduate living in United Kingdom and trying to make her niche as a Data Scientist. Before taking a deep dive into the "Data-World", she got a Bachelor's Technology degree in Computer Science and has always dreamed of writing as a kid which inspired her to write wonderful content with the right amount of technical terms to make it easy for the beginners and as well full-fledged developers to grasp a hold onto the computer technologies.
In this technology-driven world, making money through an application is one of the easiest ways to make quick money and still tricky. Knowing all the steps is one thing and following it is another. If you’re planning to develop your own food delivery application and looking for a guide and strategies to make money from it, there is no better example than DoorDash to learn.
DoorDash was set up 8 years ago in California by 4 college students for delivering food to only their fellow students. Delivering food in more than 5,000 cities has come a long way. This article will give you an insight into the basics of DoorDash, its working, its revenue strategies, future perspectives and will also give you an idea of which steps and features you can borrow from DoorDash to make money.
DoorDash was founded in the year 2013, January by Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang, and Evan Moore. It has come a long way from being only an online food delivery platform. DoorDash has not only expanded over North America, Australia, and Japan but also has added many features for all the three people involved, that is the customers, the merchants (restaurant partners), and Dashers (their delivery executives).
A few of the many features are –
There are at least a dozen food delivery services almost working on the principle with the same techniques. So, here the question arises is DoorDash works in a similar way as the others? As per the reports, in the year 2019 alone DoorDash’s revenue was 13.2 million USD and by the end of the year 2020 the customer strength increased by 75%. The number speaks for itself if DoorDash works like other food delivery services it won’t be able to get to the heights. So, definitely, it won’t follow the same working techniques. The basic principles might be the same but not the working. If DoorDash won’t work like others then how does it work?
The front-end working of the app for the end-user is slightly similar to the other food delivery apps like sign-up, select the item, add to cart, and order.
The actual working process of DoorDash goes like this – a customer places an order at one of the desired restaurants agreed with the tips and charges. The restaurant receives the order with all the instructions and starts preparing the meal meanwhile DoorDash alters the nearby Dashers. One of the Dasher accepts the order request, goes to the merchant to pay for the meal using the Red Card, picks up the order, and delivers it. DoorDash has recently shifted to Kotlin and supports multiple platforms. DoorDash has 3 different dashboards –
To connect these dashboards, maps and other services DoorDash uses its own APIs and a few third-party APIs. DoorDash has also developed its analytical tools.
Also Read:-How to Develop an Education Application?
As a user or mobile app developer, you must be wondering how DoorDash makes money? Because they charge minimal delivery charges that too usually go to the Dashers.
DoorDash makes money mostly through the commission that it earns from its merchant partners and also a small amount from third-party app partnerships. DoorDash provides a number of services and options to merchants to choose from and hence charges them also. Usually, the partnered merchants/restaurants pay annually or monthly commission to DoorDash. But some merchants prefer to pay as per the orders they receive from the platform. DoorDash also provides other kinds of delivery services like delivering bulk orders and afterward setting up the tables or allowing the merchants to select their own favorite and trustworthy Dasher for delivery. This also helps DoorDash to gain popularity and hence the revenue. DoorDash provides a number of other services to the merchants in addition to the platform to sell their food and delivery services and charges handsomely for that as well. It provides marketing programs, in-app better search ranking which is also chargeable.
DoorDash provides 3 different memberships to its merchants.
DoorDash also provides paid promotion schemes and features for the merchants to rank on top with better visibility to their customers with promotion blogs that DoorDash posts on their site with clickable links. It also generates handsome revenue by catering business performance management tools and analytical tools. DoorDash also supplies self-developed software paid tools to their merchants for finding new customers, increasing their bottom line, and outshine their competition. DoorDash also has paid in-app advertisements for its merchants. To generate extra revenue DoorDash has also indulged in paid customized financial advice tools for its partnered merchants.
DoorDash makes a little money by giving the kitchen spaces to restaurants that only prepare food that is ordered through the DoorDash app, commonly known as Cloudor Ghost kitchen. DoorDash also makes money through its own developed software that helps partnered restaurants with easy cash registering and management. As the pandemic makes the situation worse for diners and restaurants more and more businesses are shifting online to gain their footing again in the market, having their own website definitely helps but not so much. Hence, being on the already popular online food delivery app which provides tons of features makes more sense. This definitely brings more revenue to DoorDash and also helps the merchants.
A small portion of the revenue also comes from the customers on the basis of their order from which location they are ordering and at which time they are ordering. These are not delivery charges but other in-app charges. DoorDash also provides premier membership on an annual and monthly basis to its end-users with a number of benefits and charges a little for that as well.
No matter how much DoorDash makes money through the merchants or customers, a great part of its revenue comes from the funding by big ventures like Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Group among others.
If you’re a mobile app developer and thinking of developing your own food delivering app, no time is better than now. The ideas you can borrow are –
These are a few ideas you can consider to add to your food delivery mobile app. Hand if you’re already ready with your app and waiting to launch you can also refer to our previous blogHow to Launch an App?.
In this article, our main focus was giving you a clear idea about how DoorDash makes money and what ideas you can borrow for your start-up venture. In case we miss any point or you have any suggestions let us know by dropping a comment.