DoorDash Leans Into Alcohol Delivery With Marketplace Expansion

DoorDash is expanding its last-mile capabilities to include delivery of beer, wine, and spirits in 20 states, Washington D.C., Canada and Australia, with the DoorDash Marketplace service reaching more than 100 million customers.

Shoppers in legally permissible markets can tap the Alcohol tab in the DoorDash app to browse and order alcohol beverages from restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores and other retailers. It’s an extension of DoorDash’s DoorDash Drive white-label fulfillment service, which delivers alcohol for national and local merchants via their own channels.

DoorDash has developed an alcohol catalogue with 30,000 SKUs available from thousands of retailers and restaurants, whether through to-go pickup or delivery. Its DoubleDash service, which is being piloted with Albertsons Companies, will further enable some consumers the ability to tack on alcohol to a restaurant meal in some cases.

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Alcohol distribution is rife with legal complexities that vary from state to state, and DoorDash is taking some steps to better ensure it employees remain compliant with local regulations. This includes ID verification prior to checkout and multiple ID checkpoints during the delivery, as well as a compliance education course for its delivery employees who are 21 and older.

Consumers will have to upload a photo of their ID to DoorDash, which will displayed as a blurred version with only the photo and birth date appearing to delivery employees in order to verify identity. While DoorDash will store the ID for future purchase, the company said it become inaccessible to drivers after the delivery is complete.  

Shoppers, meanwhile, will also have the option to voluntarily exclude themselves from receiving alcohol orders from DoorDash, which will in turn also exclude them from receiving direct marketing communication of alcohol-related promos.

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Retailers, meanwhile, may be able to increase their average order volume by up to 30%, DoorDash estimated.

Founded in 2013, DoorDash currently operates in more than 4,000 cities in all 50 U.S. states, as well as Canada, Australia, and Japan.