DoorDash is shaking up its business model by now offering standardized pricing plans for restaurants that use its platform for pickups and deliveries.
Restaurants can now choose between three tiers of commission fees: 15 percent (Basic), 25 percent (Plus), and 30 percent (Premier). Each tier offers different levels of service, with the higher fees giving restaurants a wider delivery area and product and marketing support.
Tom Pickett, chief revenue officer for DoorDash, told Cheddar the goal was to provide restaurants with a "spectrum of options" based on their business needs.
"Some restaurants are really focused on profitability and cost-efficiency, and so the 15 percent option may be a good option for them, while others are going to be looking for much more growth and access to a wider array of customers," he said.
The third-party delivery platform previously did not offer a standardized commission fee — a source of confusion among some restaurants, which the company sought to remedy with an extensive blog post published last year explaining how merchant fees worked.
"Commissions vary by restaurant and are agreed upon individually based on the product or the level of service," the company wrote at the time. "This means there is no blanket rate applied to all restaurants on our platform."
Since then, as restaurants sometimes struggled amid the pandemic, there's been a nationwide pushback against third-party fees that has led several states and cities to pass legislation capping the commissions that platforms can charge restaurants.
It's in this shifting regulatory environment that DoorDash announced the standardized fees.
“This is us listening to our merchant partners and making adjustments,” said Christopher Payne, chief operating officers of DoorDash, at a virtual event unveiling the changes. “Essentially we’ve been learning together about what restaurants need and testing our way into what the next phase of pricing should be."
Pickett said the new system reflects the company's efforts to balance various priorities.
"We're trying to manage the overall ecosystem," he said. "If you think about it, we have to make sure that restaurants have the choice that they're looking for. We need to make sure that Dashers get paid a fair and market-competitive wage. And we have the consumers, who are looking for a good price and a good value."
A clearer set of commission fees is only one of the ways DoorDash is trying to keep restaurants happy.
The company is also hiring a "chief restaurant advisor" who will work directly with restaurant partners to gather feedback and involve them in strategic discussions.
"We hope there's a good push and pull with this person," Pickett said. "We're really interested in that feedback. We want that help to shape what we design going forward."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
