It’s only the middle of the week and DoorDash has already made multiple announcements around its continued expansion up, down, and across North America.
Now that it’s service is available in all 50 U.S. states, DoorDash is heading north and expanding into its first-ever non-English-speaking territory. The third-party delivery service today announced its official launch into Montréal, a predominantly French-speaking market and DoorDash’s first in the Canadian province of Quebec.
The addition of Montreal makes DoorDash available in 78 Canadian cities, including Winnipeg, Halifax, and Saskatoon. In a press release, the company said it plans to be in more than 100 cities across Canada by the end of 2019.
DoorDash will compete in those markets with Uber Eats, which already has a strong presence in Canada. But the rideshare giant isn’t the only company DoorDash will contend with. Delivery service Just Eat has long served Canada, and its recent $10 billion merger with Netherlands-based Takeaway.com creates one of the world’s biggest online food delivery services.
Back in the States, DoorDash continued its U.S. takeover this week by striking a national partnership with Applebee’s. While Applebee’s franchisees have independently worked with the service for some time, this new partnership is an official deal between DoorDash and Applebee’s parent company, Dine Brands Global Inc.
More importantly, the partnership addresses a growing concern among restaurant chains: retaining customer data and preserving brand integrity. DoorDash will power Applebee’s delivery, but customers will be able to order directly through the restaurant’s website and mobile app.
The partnership is now active at 1,300 of Applebee’s 1,700 locations. It is not exclusive; franchisees will continue their relationships with other third-party delivery services.
DoorDash also added partnership this week with sandwich chain Potbelly, who operates across the U.S. and has a heavy concentration of locations in the Midwest.
All these moves come on the heels of DoorDash’s recent acquisition of delivery service Caviar, a deal that expands DoorDash’s already giant geographic footprint. And last week, reports surfaced that the company was in talks to secure a line of credit ahead of a possible IPO. While DoorDash hasn’t made that news officially public, should an IPO indeed happen, the company will face the same issues around profitability its already public competitors Grubhub and Uber Eats face.
Expanding to almost every Applebee’s in America probably won’t solve the profitability issue. But it is noteworthy that Applebee’s isn’t the first chain to pick DoorDash as a national partner based on its perceived long-term viability as a food delivery service. In June, Chili’s expressed similar sentiments when it inked an exclusive partnership with the service. Again, long-term viability and actual profitability are two different things, especially when you get to the public markets, but it’s certainly not going to hurt DoorDash to have as many major chains and regions in its back pocket should an IPO come to pass.
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