As of today, DoorDash is now available in Melbourne, Australia, the first city in which the third-party food delivery service is operating outside of North America.
In a blog post, DoorDash said it has already added “thousands of restaurants” in Melbourne to its platform, including national chains like Nando’s and Betty’s Burgers.
DoorDash joins a competitive food delivery market that includes Uber Eat and Deliveroo, both of which have operated in Australian for years. The latter is even part of Australian airline Quantas’ frequent flyer program. DoorDash will also have to contend with MenuLog a subsidiary of Just Eat, whose recent acquisition of Takeaway.com makes it one of the biggest third-party food delivery companies to contend with outside of the U.S.
As to why DoorDash chose Melbourne as its first overseas market, the company did not say, though Reuters points out that the “city of 4.5 million people has been a popular entry point for global companies in the so-called ‘sharing economy.'”
The Australia expansion comes on the heels of DoorDash’s recent launch in Montreal, Canada, the service’s first non-English-speaking location. Not that the company is slowing down its march across America: Since becoming the first U.S.-based third-party delivery service to operate in all 50 states, DoorDash has been striking deals left and right with major restaurant chains. The company also recently acquired autonomous vehicle startup Scotty Labs and is potentially looking at an IPO.
In August, the company outlined a new policy for its pay structure for drivers, a move largely in response to controversies surrounding the way the service handles worker tips.
In this week’s blog post, DoorDash said it expects to expand “throughout the suburbs of Melbourne, its surrounding regional cities, and Australia broadly” over the rest of 2019 and into 2020.
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