DoorDash Hires Ex-Amazon Exec and Explores Digital Storefronts

DoorDash has reportedly hired an ex-Amazon executive to help its continued expansion beyond restaurant deliveries.

Parisa Sadrzadeh, who has also worked as Flexport’s vice president for small and midsize business and omnichannel fulfillment, will be DoorDash’s new vice president of strategy and operations, The Information reported Friday (July 26), citing a company spokesperson.

The report noted that DoorDash is also exploring software that would let merchants to build online storefronts and accept online payments, and accept eCommerce returns directly from consumers and delivering to UPS, FedEx, or the U.S. Postal Service.

Sadrzadeh joined Flexport in 2022, after nearly a dozen years at Amazon. She announced her departure from Flexport on LinkedIn last week.

Her apparent arrival at DoorDash comes as the company continues to expand into areas beyond meal delivery.

The company has announced several partnerships with retailers outside the food service sector recently, including ones last week with Michaels and Save A Lot.

“With its growing number of partners, DoorDash now provides access to groceries, retail, flowers, food and other products from more than 500,000 local merchants,” PYMNTS noted in reporting on the new partnerships last week.

The company reported in May that it reached new records across several metrics in the first quarter as it continued to expand into new segments of the local retail economy.

“What is known is that the direction of travel is always in the direction of greater digital, greater convenience,” Tony Xu, CEO and co-founder of DoorDash, said during the company’s quarterly earnings call, detailing customers’ adoption of new offerings.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about DoorDash and its competitors’ entry into the travel space, with DoorDash offering customers a chance to win things like tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert, and Uber touting tours of France.

There’s a wealth of opportunity here, that report said, as “consumers with the most cash to burn travel most of all.”

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that 75% of people making more than $100,000 annually and a similar share of those who do not live paycheck to paycheck were planning to go on trips this summer.

In addition, consumers use aggregators more when they are traveling, according to the “Tracking the Impact of Digital Tools on Food Tourism and Travel Preferences” installment of the PYMNTS Intelligence Connected Dining series. That study found that while just 4.4% of consumers used aggregators at home for their most recent restaurant purchases, 16% of consumers always turn to them while on vacation.