By Broderick McClinton, Head of DoorDash for Business
The pandemic has had a profound impact on our daily routines, including the way we eat. Instead of meeting our favorite barista on the way into the office or socializing with our colleagues in the lunch room, we’re spending a lot more time in the kitchen and eating solo at home, missing out on those moments to engage with peers and support our favorite restaurants. In this new normal, companies are adapting and looking for ways to support their employees’ wellbeing and productivity through new work-from-home corporate wellness benefits, including food perks.
Far worse, restaurants are struggling. According to Technomic’s August 2019 Catering Usage and Preferences Report, the catering market grew to nearly $65 billion in 2019. But 2020 is a completely different climate, and we’re constantly thinking about how we can help restaurants regain that lost revenue.
Given this, DoorDash has been working hard over the past few months to find solutions and opportunities for restaurants to reach the working professional.
Introducing DoorDash for Business
Today we’re excited to announce DoorDash for Business, our corporate meal solution which enables organizations to offer their workforce meal benefits and food perks through DoorDash. Through this new service, we offer companies several ways to provide meal benefits to their employees while supporting our restaurant partners.
DoorDash for Business serves all work meal occasions for remote employees and employees who have transitioned back into the office. Our meal options extend across our entire leading restaurant selection on DoorDash and Caviar in the U.S. and Canada, with vast geographic coverage, and a differentiated product mix. To date, we’ve worked with a range of clients from Fortune 100 companies to SMBs including essential businesses like hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and schools, as well as professional service firms, technology companies and banks.
There are four products within DoorDash for Business, which means a company has multiple ways in which it can design the perfect food program for its employees:
DashPass for Work: DashPass for Work is our premier remote-friendly corporate benefit in which companies of all sizes can fund DashPass memberships for their workforce as part of their employee benefits package. DashPass is a subscription that provides unlimited free delivery fees and reduced service fees from hundreds of thousands of restaurants across DoorDash and Caviar. DashPass for Work gives employees greater access to their favorite local restaurants in their neighborhoods and alleviates the stress of meal planning and prepping during busy working hours.
For restaurants and cafes that previously relied on the morning commute and weekday lunch rush to cater to business clientele, we’ve provided a new market and customer base to our restaurant partners by extending our membership into the business setting, which reduces friction for employees when planning their next meal.
In April, we partnered with Mount Sinai, New York City’s largest academic medical system, to donate free DashPass subscriptions to its 42,000 healthcare employees, including first responders, medical personnel and hospital staff. Since then DoorDash has expanded DashPass for Work, signing business contracts with companies of all sizes and industries across the U.S. and Canada to provide hospital staff, essential workers, remote employees, students, and apartment tenants with access to its DashPass for Work membership.
A few of our DashPass for Work clients include Charles Schwab, Hulu, and Stanford Research Park.
Expensed Meals: Organizations can purchase and distribute DoorDash meal credits to their employees that can be used either at home or by essential employees at the office. They can be redeemed from any restaurant on DoorDash or Caviar and companies are able to set controls over how the employees are able to spend the company-sponsored budget, including day and time restrictions. As an example, we teamed up with South Carolina Connections Academy, an accredited tuition-free online public school for K-12 students, to offer all of their teachers and staff members a flexible spending budget for their virtual lunches and staff meetings. The staff members are all remote workers, and this show of appreciation for the hard work the team puts in every day goes a long way to keep the staff connected and engaged during long teaching days at home.
Group Orders: For essential employees who have returned to the office looking for reliable, safe, and delicious options to feed their teams, they can order a meal of their choice from a preselected restaurant, which is then aggregated into one group shopping cart and delivered all at once. From team lunches to client meetings, your team gets to eat what they want. To save time and hassle, employees can also schedule these group orders in advance. Group orders have been instrumental for essential employees that are continuing their work in-person. Each order comes individually-wrapped and labeled with the employee’s name, and can all be charged to one company expense account. As an example, we’ve partnered with companies including Talis, a company dedicated to developing high-performance point-of-care diagnostic tests for infectious diseases, including for COVID-19, to support their essential staff at the office.
Employee Gift Cards: Lastly, companies can show their appreciation by treating team members or clients to their favorite meal through DoorDash gift cards. With work going remote, we’ve seen an increase in demand to use DoorDash gift cards in the corporate setting as a morale boost, as a performance perk, or as a new business or client gift. As an example, Zoom uses DoorDash for Business to celebrate team members’ birthdays.
Survey Says
To launch DoorDash for Business, we commissioned a survey of 1,000 working Americans* to better understand just how workers are feeling about their food and employee benefits during the pandemic. Here’s what we found:
90% miss at least one food-related benefit of the office — with 76% saying that “eating and socializing with colleagues” is the most commonly missed food-related benefit of regularly working from a job site or office. That means three-fourths of employees miss the social aspect of the company cafeteria most.
85% of working Americans say regular food delivery would increase their job satisfaction, and 75% say it would improve their productivity too. While food benefits are on the decline, appetite for them is not.
Additionally, 49% of working Americans say they have had at least one work failure due to preparing food for themselves or family while working from home. This increases to 53% of people with children that have missed a deadline, call or other work matter because of the need to prep food.
Fueling Our Communities
With more than 5,000 businesses and teams already signed on, any company can take advantage of the new offerings. And just as important, we’re starting to see the impact that these new revenue streams are having on our restaurant partners.
“COVID caused Artesano’s corporate catering sales to completely disappear. Fortunately, DoorDash for Business has found a creative way to slowly bring back some catering sales to corporate customers, allowing us to slowly increase our catering sales again so that we can get back to profitability. We are developing a tight partnership with DDFW that will be mutually beneficial for both sides, as well as to the final customers. We feel like we are creeping back towards a more normal business environment, albeit slowly, but DDFW is helping us do that. Since they launched their new efforts after the onset of COVID, DoorDash for Business now represents 50% of our catering sales! The truth is that most third-party catering companies have not gotten their act together yet to jumpstart catering sales. We are excited the DDFW is being successful in their efforts to pivot corporate catering sales.” Doug Mathieux, Owner
“In a time when any sense of normalcy should be counted as a blessing, DoorDash for Business brought us consistent orders that not only helped us stay afloat financially but also kept our team’s morale intact, knowing that people are seeking out Saucy Asian. It’s given some weight to the importance of what we do. DoorDash for Business has brought us a total of $24K in the last six months. Glad to be a part of this program and looking forward to larger and consistent DoorDash for Business orders.” Andrew Shinn, Owner/Head Chef
We are excited to introduce services designed to help both companies and restaurants during a time that has upended how we work and dine with one another. We’ve created a blog, The Lunch Break, for People Ops & HR managers to access tips and information on fueling their remote workforce.
Learn more and get your company signed up here.
*Survey Methodology: This sample of 1000 adults (18 years or older) was surveyed between September 16, 2020 and September 18, 2020. Responses were restricted to individuals who are employed for wages. DKC Analytics conducted and analyzed this survey with a sample procured using the Pollfish survey delivery platform, which delivers online surveys globally through mobile apps and the mobile web along with the desktop web.
