DoorDash Reports 25M Active Users, Eyes Category Expansion

DoorDash Reaches 25M Users, Eyes Int'l Expansion

Even with mobility much higher than it was throughout 2020, consumers continue to have their meals delivered more and more often, according to DoorDash’s record-breaking fourth quarter.

The San Francisco-based food delivery giant, which is the category leader in the United States, and which operates in over 7,000 cities across four countries, reported its fourth quarter 2021 results Wednesday (Feb. 16). In the quarter, the company reached its highest-yet number of total orders and gross order value.

“When you look at all of our active users, … we had a record quarter of 25 million monthly active consumers,” DoorDash CEO and Co-Founder Tony Xu told analysts on an earnings call. “We’re single-digit percentage of the populations that we serve, and certainly as you start adding in too some of these new categories, as well as international geographies, and there’s the platform side of what we do with products like drive and storefront, we’re a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the opportunity in front of us.”

The company sustained significant losses, with a generally accepted account principles (GAAP) net loss of $155 million, although this figure is less than half the size of what it was in Q4 2020. For comparison, however, competitor Uber Eats is faring much better, with Uber recently reporting its delivery business’s first profitable quarter.

Read more: Delivery Aggregator Losses Point to Economic Value of Platform Model

In the quarter, the company led the $750 million Series B funding round of rapid grocery delivery startup Flink, debuted ultrafast delivery of groceries and convenience store items from DashMart in New York and announced that it is integrating flexible fulfillment into its Self-Delivery product.

See more: Led by DoorDash, Grocery Delivery Startup Flink Raises $750M

Read also: DoorDash Debuts Ultrafast Delivery Service in New York

See also: DoorDash and Grubhub Race to Offer Restaurants the Most Flexible Fulfillment

Speaking about the losses associated with new investments, DoorDash Chief Financial Officer Prabir Adarkar noted that the company prioritizes increasing retention and improving unit economics when considering a new initiative.

“When you see both of these things, like we have with our new verticals, like we have with our international business and with our platform business, that’s when you start scaling up our investments,” he said. “That’s the framework we generally use versus trying to … target a certain margin.

More than half of all U.S. consumers have used DoorDash, according to data from PYMNTS’ November report “Digital Divide: Aggregators and High-Value Restaurant Customers,” created in collaboration with Paytronix. The study, which drew from a census-balanced survey of more than 2,200 U.S. adults, found that 57% of restaurant customers had ordered from DoorDash in the previous 15 months.

Get the report: Aggregators and High-Value Restaurant Customers

Additionally, research from PYMNTS’ new Restaurant Friction Index, also created in collaboration with Paytronix, found that 42% of restaurant customers ordered via aggregator. Moreover, the study, which featured the results of a survey of more than 2,100 consumers, noted that 63% of these consumers ordering through aggregators reported doing so because it was easy and convenient, and 38% did so because it was the only way to get their restaurant of choice delivered. Meanwhile, the most common reason non-aggregator-users steered clear is that they wanted to avoid the fees.

Read more: New Data Show Digital Loyalty Programs Are Key Differentiator for Top-Performing Restaurants