DoorDash Won Food Delivery by Seizing the Suburbs and $2 Billion
As the unprofitable startup eyes an IPO, one DoorDash investor informally floated a sale of the company to Uber.
There aren’t many jobs in Davidson, North Carolina, that offer the flexibility and decent pay that Alfonso Auz was looking for. He tried a bunch of gigs, including driving for Uber, before eventually settling on DoorDash Inc. Auz, 47, usually makes at least $150 a day delivering food from restaurants in his hometown, without having to commute to the nearest job center, Charlotte, 40 minutes away. “I usually turn on the app while I’m still at home,” Auz said.
Towns like Davidson are at the center of a strategy that secured DoorDash a firm position atop the U.S. food delivery market, said Tony Xu, DoorDash’s chief executive officer. The suburbs, he said, were underestimated by competitors, giving DoorDash the opportunity to forge nationwide exclusivity deals with the likes of the Cheesecake Factory and Chili’s. “While our competitors focus on the cities, we focused on the suburbs,” said Xu. “That’s how we were able to become the market leader.”