DoorDash today announced a partnership with drug store giant Rite Aid to offer same-day delivery for a wide range of home and food essential items. Delivery is available starting today through the DoorDash app from more than 2,100 Rite Aid locations across 17 states.
Customers will be able to order more than 24,000 items for delivery from Rite Aid, including health and beauty supplies, non-perishable and perishable groceries like milk and ice cream, as well as over-the-counter medicine. DoorDash says the average delivery time is less than an hour.
For Rite Aid, offering DoorDash as a delivery partner makes a lot of sense. Drug stores are where people pick up, well, the drugs they need to feel better when they are sick. Given the world’s new sensitivities to viruses and how they spread, it’s a good thing for sick people to stay at home and out of a store when they need Nyquill and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to feel better.
DoorDash is also under pressure as competitors on multiple fronts ramp up their deliveries. Grocery retailers, like Walmart and Albertsons, which also offer over-the-counter medications and health and beauty items, have expanded their delivery options thanks to the pandemic. But a new category of delivery-only stores like goPuff are on the rise, offering 24-hour delivery of food and home essentials in as little as a half hour.
In fact, DoorDash operates its own growing chain of delivery-only convenience stores. One has to wonder how this new delivery data from Rite Aid could inform DoorDash’s decisions as it ramps up expansion of its own stores.
