DoorDash for Restaurants: NEW Guide [2024]

Are you considering using DoorDash for your restaurant, or just exploring ways to get more orders?

Whether you're new to food delivery platforms or already familiar with them, understanding how DoorDash works can help you make informed decisions that align with your business goals. 

In this guide, we'll walk you through the essential details about DoorDash, how it operates, and what it can offer your restaurant. We'll also share some practical tips and strategies to help you maximize your success and stand out in the competitive food delivery market.

DoorDash Explained

Let's start with the basics — DoorDash is a platform where customers can order food for delivery or pick-up. It partners with a variety of businesses, including restaurants, grocery stores, liquor stores, and even flower shops. Founded in 2013, DoorDash has grown rapidly and is now based in San Francisco, California. Today, it controls over half of the convenience delivery market.

In December 2020, DoorDash went public and is now listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The brand also owns Caviar, a delivery service specializing in upscale restaurants that usually don’t offer delivery.

Where Can You Use DoorDash?

DoorDash operates across the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Japan, and it’s quickly growing into new areas. Since DoorDash relies on independent contractors, known as Dashers, the availability of services in a particular area depends on how many Dashers are around to make deliveries.

One common question restaurants have is how far DoorDash will deliver from their location. There isn’t a simple answer to this, and it can change. DoorDash uses an algorithm that factors in how many Dashers are working, the delivery distance, and how long it will take to get the food to the customer.

The delivery area might be large one day and smaller the next. DoorDash prioritizes getting orders to customers quickly while the food is still hot and fresh. Dashers are also given time limits to ensure orders arrive on time.

How DoorDash Works

After a restaurant signs up with DoorDash, its menu is added to the DoorDash app for customers to browse and order from. Customers can search for the restaurant by name, or they can explore options by cuisine type, like fast food, Mexican, Asian, pizza, or chicken. They can also search for specific dishes.

The customer selects their food on the DoorDash app and places the order. The restaurant gets the order through their DoorDash tablet and can choose to confirm or cancel it. If confirmed, the kitchen prepares the food, and the restaurant packs everything up for delivery.

DoorDash then assigns a Dasher to deliver the order. The Dasher goes to the restaurant to pick it up. Each order has the customer’s name on it so the restaurant and Dasher can make sure the right order goes to the correct customer.

Dashers have a set time to deliver each order, which depends on the distance between the restaurant and the delivery address. It also varies if the app assigns multiple orders at once, meaning the Dasher might need to pick up from more than one restaurant on a single run.

All Dashers carry insulated bags to keep food hot or cold, depending on the order. Special pizza bags, like the ones used by national pizza chains, are available for pizza deliveries.

Some Dashers use larger bags, called catering bags, for bigger orders. DoorDash has a special program for large orders, but only Dashers who meet certain requirements, like being on time and having good customer ratings, can participate.

How Much Does DoorDash Charge?

There’s no single price for using DoorDash delivery. The company offers different pricing options so restaurants can choose what works best for them. Some of these pricing models are based on a commission fee paid by the restaurant to DoorDash.

Commission fees start at 6% for pickup orders and range from 15% to 30% for delivery orders, depending on the package selected. Higher commission plans come with more perks, like access to DashPass customers — people who use DoorDash frequently.

Additional DoorDash Pricing Options

DoorDash also offers a flat-rate service per order, which ranges from $6.99 to $10.99 as of March 2022. There’s an option for restaurants to use DoorDash as their storefront for online orders, and another plan that allows restaurants to use their own delivery drivers.

As mentioned earlier, it is highly recommend to choose the premium tier and adjust your menu prices. DoorDash customers are used to paying more for convenience. This strategy helps boost visibility, which is important when starting out. No one wants to be the first to order from a restaurant without reviews, so maximizing exposure early on is key.

How to Register Your Restaurant with DoorDash

Signing up with DoorDash is straightforward for new restaurants. You can start the registration process by clicking here.

You’ll need to provide some basic details, including:

• Restaurant name
• Address
• Business type (such as liquor store, grocery, restaurant, etc.)

When you register your restaurant with DoorDash, you’ll need to choose a service plan. We suggest going with the premium tier to boost your order volume right from the start. While this plan costs more per order, you can offset this by raising your menu prices on the platform. We’ll discuss how to do this in more detail later.

You’ll also need to decide how you want to receive orders. You can opt for a free email option, or choose to use tablets or printers for a more efficient setup.

You’ll then need to add your menu. You can do this by providing a link to your menu, uploading a PDF, or adding a picture of your menu. DoorDash supports pictures so customers can see what they’re ordering. While eLogii doesn’t handle menu management, it can enhance your delivery efficiency by optimizing routes, which complements your menu setup with other tools. We highly recommend using a third-party integrator if you use many delivery apps to avoid the hassle of managing and updating several menus manually.

DoorDash will need some legal information, like the business’s tax identification number and the owner's name. You’ll also need to provide banking details so DoorDash can send payments for the orders. Your banking information is secure with DoorDash; they won’t withdraw any money from your account. It’s only used to deposit funds.

How to Boost Your Restaurant’s Visibility on DoorDash

Think of DoorDash as the Google for restaurants — you need to optimize your listing to stand out from the competition. The higher your visibility in search results, the more likely customers are to find and click on your listing. Just like on Google, where 75% of clicks go to the top three search results, DoorDash users tend to choose higher-ranked restaurants.

People use delivery apps in similar ways. If your restaurant ranks higher, you’re likely to get more orders. DoorDash rewards restaurants based on ratings, order accuracy, speed of acceptance, and delivery distance.

DoorDash prefers to send orders to restaurants that accept them quickly and prepare them accurately. This ensures a good customer experience, leading to better reviews and more orders. While you can’t control your location, you can manage other factors that affect your ranking.

Order accuracy is crucial in the restaurant business. However, mistakes can happen when transferring orders from the DoorDash tablet to your POS system. These errors can delay order acceptance and lead to inaccurate preparations, hurting customer satisfaction and lowering your DoorDash ranking.

With eLogii's route optimization software, you can not only streamline delivery routes but also enhance order management efficiency. By automating delivery assignments and reducing delays, eLogii helps ensure timely, accurate deliveries, boosting customer satisfaction and maintaining a higher ranking on DoorDash.