DoorDash Extends Kroger Partnership to 2,700 New Stores

DoorDash is expanding its partnership with grocery chain Kroger to 2,700 new stores.

The updated collaboration kicks off Oct. 1 and will cover deliveries of fresh foods, essential items and Kroger’s private label “Our Brands” products to millions of customers, DoorDash announced Monday (Sept. 29).

“Customers want the convenience of on-demand delivery paired with value and savings from their favorite local grocer,” the company said in a news release, adding that Kroger “has long been one of the most searched and requested grocers on DoorDash.”

Kroger is the largest grocer on DoorDash’s platform, which is seeing a surge in grocery orders, per the release, with more consumers in the U.S. purchasing groceries through DoorDash than ever before during the second quarter of this year.

Access to Kroger’s private label offerings — store brands not affiliated with national manufacturers — is noteworthy as that category has seen a surge in popularity across the grocery sector, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Shekar Raman, CEO and co-founder of Birdzi, said the rise in private-label brands can be attributed to a range of factors.

“Major retailers have aggressively expanded their private-label assortments,” Raman said. “Beyond the budget-friendly items shoppers expect, retailers have tapped into premium, organic and specialty segments. At the same time, economic pressures and inflation have pushed shoppers to find creative ways to cut costs, making private-label products an increasingly attractive choice.”

In other Kroger news, company executives earlier this month announced plans to reintroduce paper coupons to help boost the chain’s appeal to customers who are older or who don’t have the latest iPhone.

During the grocery giant’s recent earnings call, Kroger Chairman and CEO Ron Sargent said bringing paper coupons back to every store as part of an effort to simplify promotional offers.

Sargent said he’d talked with “hundreds and hundreds” of customers over the past six months and learned that older shoppers who may not be as digitally proficient as younger ones want access to the same deals available on smartphones.

“And so we wanted to give them an equal playing field,” the CEO said. “And I think the end result, we’ll get incremental business from that.”

Sargent said he also saw that customers “who don’t have a $600 iPhone” felt disenfranchised by digital coupons.

“So, we’re really trying to appeal to a broader customer segment, not only people that are very digitally savvy, but also people who are not or not able to be,” the CEO said.