Client: DoorDash

Campaign: Storefront Product Launch January ‘21

The Problem: Commission-based marketplaces are seen as unaffordable by both restaurant owners and consumers in the wake of Covid-19.

Audience: Restaurant owners familiar with DoorDash.

Objective: Give restaurants a compelling reason to add DoorDash Storefront to their current roster of online ordering options.

Background: Restaurants have a 30% failure rate prior to the limitations of Covid-19. Restaurant’s entree margins historically vary between 6-11% on average after rent, labor, food costs, and takeout materials are accounted for.

In the absence of dining rooms, online delivery apps make this margin impossible to maintain given their commission-based cost structure.

Since March 2020, restaurants have been apprehensive about promoting their presence on marketplaces. Some have gone as far as encouraging their loyal customers to order directly, and boycotting third party marketplace apps.

As a result, marketplaces are beginning to be seen as an unfair way to access a restaurant’s menu by local customers.

Storefront is an online-ordering solution by DoorDash that emulates the partnered restaurant’s branding, and is accessed through their own website, social media pages, and google business listings by customers. It is more affordable for the partner thanks to a monthly subscription rate, in place of a commission, and with the same support from DoorDash’s tech team and couriers.

Tensions:

• Consumers increasingly want to “do the right thing” when it comes to purchasing food from their favorite restaurants, but still covet the convenience of delivery.

• Most restaurants cannot afford to hire, insure, and pay their own delivery drivers to make up for their absence on a marketplace.

• Restaurants still need to simultaneously offer and promote both delivery, and take away orders to stay open in a post-Covid world.

Key Insight: Restaurants are pillars of their community that cannot exist without support from the community itself— their customers.

Strategic Idea: Reward restaurant’s relationships with their customers by giving them a way to offer the convenience of online ordering and delivery through their own brand’s digital presence.