DoorDash

• 1. Introduction

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  DoorDash controls 56 percent of the food delivery market in the United States, more than any other platform. It also holds 60 percent of the market for convenience deliveries. By the end of 2020, 450,000 merchants and 20 million consumers used the service, supported by more than one million delivery couriers. The company trades publicly under the ticker symbol DASH.

  Yet DoorDash has repeatedly ended up in courtrooms and under government scrutiny over how it treats drivers, restaurants and customers. How did a single delivery platform come to dominate American food delivery? What has that growth cost the people caught inside it?

• 2. Palo Alto To Wall Street

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  In January 2013, Stanford University students Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang and Evan Moore launched a website called PaloAltoDelivery.com in Palo Alto, California. That summer, Y Combinator gave the fledgling company $120,000 in seed money in exchange for a 7 percent stake. The founders incorporated the business as DoorDash in June 2013.

  DoorDash signed its first fast food partnership in April 2016, teaming with CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. In December 2017, the company added Wendy's as a delivery partner.

  By December 2018, DoorDash had overtaken Uber Eats to claim second place in total US food delivery sales, trailing only GrubHub. Three months later, in March 2019, its share of the on-demand delivery market reached 27.6 percent, pushing past GrubHub entirely. By early 2019, DoorDash was the largest food delivery provider in the country by consumer spending.

  By June 2020, DoorDash had raised more than $2.5 billion across several funding rounds. Backers included Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, SV Angel, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, GIC and Kleiner Perkins. That September, DoorDash struck a partnership with KFC, followed by one with Taco Bell in October.

  DoorDash became a public company in December 2020, raising $3.37 billion through its initial public offering. In August 2022, the company ended a partnership with Walmart that had run since 2018. Three months later, in November 2022, DoorDash announced layoffs of 1,250 corporate employees, about six percent of its workforce, to cut costs.

  In September 2023, DoorDash moved its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq. It joined the Nasdaq-100 index on the 18th of December 2023. In 2024, DoorDash made its debut on the Fortune 500 list, ranking No. 443.

  In June 2023, the company had already begun offering drivers the option of an hourly minimum wage instead of per-delivery pay. That hourly rate only applied while a delivery was active.

• 3. Drivers Push Back

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  In 2017, delivery drivers in California and Massachusetts filed a class-action lawsuit accusing DoorDash of misclassifying them as independent contractors rather than employees. A tentative settlement in 2022 required DoorDash to pay $100 million in total. Of that, $61 million went to more than 900,000 drivers, just over $130 each, while $28 million went to the lawyers. Gizmodo criticized the deal. It noted that chief executive Tony Xu had received a $413 million pay package the year before, one of the largest CEO payouts ever recorded.

  On the 4th of May 2019, DoorDash confirmed that a data breach had exposed sensitive information belonging to 4.9 million customers, delivery workers and merchants. Anyone who had joined the platform after the 5th of April 2018 was unaffected by the breach. A class-action lawsuit over the breach followed in October 2019.

  Reporters at The New York Times criticized DoorDash's tipping policy in July 2019, and The Verge, Vox and Gothamist followed with their own coverage. Under that policy, a customer's tip went first to DoorDash to cover the driver's guaranteed minimum payment, not directly to the driver. Drivers only received the portion of a tip that exceeded that guaranteed minimum.

  By January 2020, reporting showed DoorDash had misrepresented how it handled driver tips, leaving drivers earning an average of $1.45 an hour after expenses. Even after the company said it had overhauled the system, it kept adjusting per-delivery payouts in ways that reduced driver earnings. A customer sued over the "materially false and misleading" tipping policy, and the case moved to arbitration in August 2020. Under pressure, DoorDash revised its policy. It also settled a related case with District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine for $2.5 million, split among delivery workers, the government and charity.

  In July 2021, DoorDash drivers went on strike over the lack of tip transparency and demands for higher pay. At the time, and still as of June 2022, DoorDash did not let drivers see a customer's full tip before accepting a delivery. When a tip passed a certain amount, DoorDash hid part of it until after the delivery was finished. The strike followed DoorDash rewriting its code to cut off driver access to Para, a third-party app that had let them see full tip amounts.

  In 2025, DoorDash agreed to pay around $17 million to settle a class action over its tipping practices. The suit accused the company of misleading both consumers and delivery workers about how tips were docked from drivers' pay rather than going to them.

• 4. City Halls And Courtrooms

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  In April 2020, a lawsuit called Davitashvili v. GrubHub Inc. accused DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates and Uber Eats of using monopolistic tactics. The suit claimed the four apps only listed restaurants that agreed to charge dine-in customers the same price as delivery customers. Plaintiffs argued the arrangement forced dine-in customers to subsidize delivery costs. They said the apps charged fees ranging from 13 to 40 percent of revenue, while restaurant profit margins ran from just 3 to 9 percent. The suit sought treble damages dating back to the 14th of April 2016. Several preliminary filings had been made, but no trial date had been set.

  In May 2021, a St. Louis restaurant called Lona's Lil Eats sued DoorDash for listing the business without permission. The lawsuit claimed DoorDash then blocked orders from reaching Lona's and redirected customers to other restaurants, citing distance as the reason. In reality, according to the suit, Lona's simply had not paid DoorDash a listing fee. Unauthorized restaurant listings of this kind are illegal in California.

  In August 2021, the city of Chicago sued both DoorDash and GrubHub. Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot said the companies had used "unfair and deceptive tactics to take advantage of restaurants and consumers who were struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic." Both DoorDash and GrubHub denied the lawsuit's claims.

  In 2023, a class-action lawsuit accused DoorDash of charging iPhone users more than Android users for the same orders. User testing cited in the case showed several instances of higher fees and delivery charges on Apple devices. DoorDash denied the allegations as the roughly $1 billion suit proceeded.

  In August 2023, DoorDash was ordered to pay a total of $1.6 million to its drivers and the city of Seattle. Investigators found the platform made it difficult for drivers to request paid time off. Of that total, $1.1 million went toward safe and sick time credits, $500,000 went directly to drivers, and $8,500 covered city fees.

  In February 2024, California regulators found DoorDash had illegally sold personal data and ordered the company to pay a $375,000 civil penalty. As part of the resolution, DoorDash agreed to begin complying with two privacy laws it had been ignoring. Those were the California Consumer Privacy Act and the California Online Privacy Protection Act.

• 5. Building Beyond Delivery

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  In October 2019, DoorDash opened its first ghost kitchen, called DoorDash Kitchen, in Redwood City, California, housing four restaurants under one roof. The following year, in November 2020, DoorDash opened its first physical restaurant location, partnering with Bay Area restaurant Burma Bites for pickup and delivery.

  DoorDash added grocery delivery in August 2020, starting in California and the Midwest. In 2021, the company introduced DoubleDash, letting customers order from multiple merchants in a single delivery. That same year, DoorDash expanded alcohol delivery to 20 US states, Washington DC, Canada and Australia.

  In March 2025, DoorDash partnered with the buy now, pay later service Klarna, letting customers spread small payments over time. The move drew widespread criticism and online mockery, with critics pointing to concerns about rising household debt in America.

  In September 2025, DoorDash partnered with Ace Hardware, the largest hardware cooperative, to deliver home goods from more than 4,000 Ace locations. That deal pushed DoorDash's delivery business well beyond restaurant meals and into everyday household goods.

• 6. Growing Through Acquisitions

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  In August 2019, DoorDash acquired Scotty Labs, a tele-operations startup working on self-driving and remote-controlled vehicle technology.

  In October 2019, DoorDash bought Caviar from Square, Inc. for $410 million. Caviar specialized in delivery from upscale, urban restaurants that typically did not offer delivery on their own.

  On the 8th of February 2021, DoorDash announced the acquisition of Chowbotics, a robotics company known for its salad-making machine. The companies did not disclose the deal's terms, though Chowbotics had been valued at $46 million back in 2018.

  On the 9th of November 2021, DoorDash announced its acquisition of the Finnish company Wolt for more than $8.1 billion. In Europe, the same deal was reported at around €7 billion.

  In March 2022, DoorDash acquired Bbot, a startup that built digital ordering and payment tools for restaurants and hospitality venues.

  In April 2025, DoorDash made an initial offer to acquire the UK-based Deliveroo for £2.7 billion, or $3.6 billion. The following month, DoorDash announced it had completed the acquisition of Deliveroo for $3.9 billion.

  That same month, in May 2025, DoorDash also announced an all-cash acquisition of the restaurant booking platform SevenRooms for $1.2 billion.

• 7. A Presence Across Continents

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  DoorDash first expanded outside the United States in 2015, launching service in Toronto, Canada. In September 2019, it moved beyond North America for the first time, launching in Melbourne, Australia, before expanding further across the country.

  In 2021, DoorDash expanded to Sendai, Japan in June and Stuttgart, Germany in November. The following year, in June 2022, it launched in the Wellington region of New Zealand.

  As of April 2026, DoorDash operates directly in the United States, including Puerto Rico, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Through its subsidiaries Deliveroo and Wolt, it also reaches customers across Europe and in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Together, the combined company now spans 40 countries and serves 50 million users each month.

• 8. Feeding Neighborhoods

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  In 2018, DoorDash launched Project DASH, a partnership with local food security organizations to deliver donations to people in need. By August 2019, the program had grown to 25 cities across the United States and Canada, delivering more than one million pounds of food.

  By September 2021, Project DASH operated in more than 900 cities and had delivered more than 15 million meals. In 2020, DoorDash also partnered with the National Urban League on its Main Street Strong program. The company pledged $200 million over five years to support restaurants and drivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of that, $12 million was set aside to help drivers of color build job skills and financial literacy.

  In 2022, DoorDash partnered with Meals on Wheels to deliver food directly to senior citizens.