Restaurant feedback has always been a fundamental part of our company and has helped us to build strong, meaningful partnerships with merchants across the world.
Now more than ever, our community’s voice and perspective is essential to the role we play in the food and restaurant industry. Which is why it’s important to our future that we set up processes both internally and externally so we don’t miss a beat, and hear directly from merchants on the things the matter most to them.
As part of our Main Street Strong program, this past summer we established the Restaurant Advisory Council (RAC). The industry-first RAC is a group of small business leaders who advise on key initiatives and provide critical feedback on programs and products so we may build deeper partnerships to help restaurants grow.
The inaugural class includes 12 small business owners, chefs and operators from across the U.S and Canada, all who are current partners of DoorDash. This first group includes,
Jimmy Rizvi, Owner, Gupshup in NYC
Charisse McGill, Owner, Lokal Artisan Foods in Philadelphia
Jill Gray, Co-Owner, Tortello in Chicago
Stella Yu, Marketing Director, Kinton Ramen in Toronto
Dave Singh, Owner, Danwei Canting in Portland
Bryan Tublin, Owner, Kitava in San Francisco
Chelsey Smith, Franchisee, Molly’s Cupcakes in Chicago
Gabriella Mann, Founder, Baba Cool, in Brooklyn
Aaron Noveshen, CEO, Starbird Chicken in San Francisco
David Yusen, Business Development Director, Heavy Restaurant Group in Seattle
Mark Lewis, Co-Owner, The Plant Cafe Organic in San Francisco
Benson Wang, Owner, SL Hospitality, in San Francisco
“Serving on DoorDash’s inaugural Restaurant Advisory Council provided a platform to be a voice for the industry and gain invaluable insight to DoorDash’s products and policies. I appreciate the opportunity to advise DoorDash, in an open and honest way, on issues that are important to the larger restaurant industry in order to hopefully make an impact on other restaurant partners down the road.” – Charisse McGill, Owner, Lokal Artisan Foods
Beginning this past July, the RAC joined DoorDash leaders monthly, for open conversations surrounding pertinent industry issues as well as DoorDash products, programs and policies – all enabling us to better understand what works for restaurants and where we need to drive improvement in the merchant experience.
For example, this group provided input and feedback to help shape our first ever Main Street Strong Merchant Conference, they also previewed new features in the merchant portal, providing feedback to advance our product roadmap including our newly launched customer feedback tool. Most notably, the RAC provided critical feedback on what restaurants need to survive the colder months which led to our decision to increase restaurant grants in our Main Street Strong five-year commitment from $2M to $10M.
“The DoorDash Restaurant Council was a great benefit. Being able to listen to other restaurateurs and hearing about both issues and solutions they were dealing with was invaluable and having access to key DoorDash personnel to address programs and ideas for the future made it a true collaboration. Please continue to reach out to your partners with such innovative ideas and programs” – Mark Lewis, Co-Owner, Plant Cafe
While the inaugural class ended their term in December, we are kicking off the second cohort which will convene in later this month. We’re excited to continue learning, adapting and growing with the help of our restaurant partners and the Restaurant Advisory Council.
