Millions of people turn to Dashing as a way to earn flexible income right when they need it. Whether it's to support their families, save for a special purchase, or simply to have extra cash on hand, every Dasher comes to the platform with unique motivations and dashes in their own way. From college students balancing classes and deliveries to parents fitting in dashes around their kids' schedules, the flexibility of DoorDash attracts a diverse range of individuals. In our surveys, we asked Dashers how they feel about DoorDash and how they integrate dashing into their busy lives. Their stories reveal just how unique each Dasher’s experience is, and in this blog, we explore some of these stories, in their own words.
How has dashing impacted your life?
We asked Dashers this question as part of our national Dasher survey. Almost 7000 Dashers responded, here’s a breakdown of what they said:
Dashing has been a force for good
The overwhelming majority of respondents said the impact was positive (83%), another 9% said it was neutral and the remaining 8% said there were drawbacks. This makes sense—dashing is a choice, and those who find value in it participate, while others opt for different opportunities.
That’s a lot of Dasher stories, let’s look at what a sample of 100 of these looks like. Tap the dots to see individual Dasher stories about the way DoorDash impacted them.
Flexibility and financial freedom are key
We used topic modeling techniques to identify clusters and commonalities between Dashers. Unsurprisingly, the top focus areas for them were flexibility, financial freedom and more control over their time. The bars are sized based on how often each theme came up in responses. Hover over a bar to read stories in the cluster.
Tell us about your typical day and how dashing fits into your life
We asked Dashers this question as part of our Dasher survey on app activity. Over 1000 Dashers responded and shared how they thought about dashing as part of their schedules.
What you do on the app is shaped around what you do off the app
Some Dashers had set days they liked to dash, others turned on the app whenever they were looking to earn quickly. How Dashers thought about earning on the platform differed largely by their main priorities outside of dashing:
While Dashers might converge on why they dash, how they dash is a different story
When we tried to find clusters for these Dasher responses, we saw that there were few to be found. Instead of big themes, we see lots of smaller bars representing a variety of ways in which people dash. In many cases, we couldn't tease out a set schedule at all.
Through their open text responses, Dashers show us how much they vary in how they dash, but the reasons why they dash are strikingly aligned.
