DoorDash Expands Retail Marketplace and AI Shopping Tools
DoorDash has had a busy month, expanding both its retail marketplace and its in-app technology. The delivery platform added Macy’s, Anthropologie, The North Face, Vans, and Timberland to its retail roster this week. Alongside those additions, DoorDash is rolling out Dasher Returns, a service designed to simplify returns by coordinating a pickup through the platform. The company also introduced several AI-powered tools, including Text DoorDash, an extension of the Ask DoorDash in-app assistant that supports conversational browsing and lets customers place orders via text without opening the app.
Costco Partnership and SNAP/EBT Expansion
These updates follow DoorDash’s recent partnership with Costco, announced earlier this month — a retailer the company had long sought to add. DoorDash also expanded its SNAP/EBT program by adding seven new grocers, including regional chains such as Albertsons Market, Amigos, and Boyer’s Food Markets. The new partnerships and features support DoorDash’s goal of building what it describes as a “mall in your pocket,” reducing the friction of browsing and decision-making in online shopping.
Mike Goldblatt, vice president of enterprise partnerships at DoorDash, told Modern Retail that the latest retail and tech expansions reflect the company’s ongoing effort to move beyond restaurant delivery.
Goldblatt said this year’s focus is on broadening DoorDash’s partnerships to serve retailers and customers better, as user behavior shifts from one-off convenience orders toward a more routine shopping cadence.
With the addition of Costco, DoorDash now carries eight of the top 10 U.S. grocers on its platform. “With Costco being a club, there is material value in what they bring to their members and to the DoorDash consumer,” Goldblatt said.
“We’re really excited to bring that value and that selection to the consumer base,” Goldblatt said, noting that users had been searching for the warehouse club on DoorDash for years before the partnership.
Balancing AI Assistance With Customer Habits
On the technology side, Goldblatt said that as DoorDash builds out more conversational AI shopping capabilities, it aims to account for customers’ varying habits. “What we’re always trying to do in the app is reduce friction,” he said.
“Some consumers come to the app and just know exactly what they want at that moment, and are in and out in 25 seconds without even considering an agentic option,” said Goldblatt.
DoorDash’s platform increasingly draws on customer signals from what they buy across restaurants, grocery, and retail. As Goldblatt described it, sometimes the intent is, “Here is this recipe, give me all the ingredients,” while other times it’s, “Give me some ideas.”
That’s where discovery becomes interesting, Goldblatt said, because the AI features help speed up the old-school routine of reading a recipe and searching for each item in the app. “That is a slow process, and you’re not going to see the high conversion that the agentic solutions do,” he said. “The basket size becomes 2X because people are getting what they want quickly.”
Value and Affordability Drive Adoption
Even with all the AI-enabled features, Goldblatt said value and savings remain a top draw for many DoorDash users, which is why programs like SNAP/EBT and partners like Costco matter for attracting customers.
Three years after launching SNAP/EBT payments, DoorDash says over 4.5 million users have added their SNAP cards to the platform, and about 75,000 stores now accept the benefit. That has given 99% of SNAP households access to at least one participating store on DoorDash.
In-app features are also being built for price-sensitive shoppers. For example, when a customer is building a cart at a particular retailer, DoorDash’s agentic assistant may suggest alternatives to save money — swapping one product for a different size or brand. “Sometimes it’s within a brand offering a different pack size,” Goldblatt said. In other cases, the assistant offers a private-label version that costs less.
“Affordability is so crucial that we want to surface options to the consumer and build the trust, so they know when they come to a retailer on DoorDash, they’re getting maximum value,” he said.
