Dive Brief:
- DoorDash is putting a focus on winning customers with its end-to-end shopping experience as it develops agentic AI capabilities over the coming years, CEO and co-founder Tony Xu said on a Q1 2026 earnings call Wednesday.
- DoorDash plans on making continuous improvements to its selection, accuracy, speed and customer support alongside AI-driven advancements in product discovery.
- “What's the point of having the best discovery experience if we can't bring you that exact item, or if that exact item were out of stock or it didn't meet your personalized preferences so that we can't actually solve for that need?” Xu said on the call.
Dive Insight:
DoorDash is focusing on providing an excellent experience from discovery to delivery as the ordering platform builds agentic capabilities and expands its grocery business.
“The DoorDash philosophy and story has always been the same, which is we have to create the best end-to-end shopping experience,” Xu said. “If we do that, we will continue to be the ones that innovate, lead.”
This focus on experience has been driving strong results for years, including the most recent quarter, according to Xu.
DoorDash’s total orders increased 27% year over year to 933 million, and monthly active users reached a record high in the first quarter of 2026, according to an earnings report. Revenue grew 33% year over year to $4 billion.
The company sees its “robust catalog” of items as key to its agentic future, Xu said. For its grocery business, DoorDash is collecting information on where every banana sits and where every ripe or unripe avocado can be found, which leaders see as essential to accurate and timely delivery.
“All of that information about the physical world — of which there are billions of items, tens of millions per city — getting that annotated and having that is unique and proprietary to DoorDash, which we don't have to share with anybody,” Xu said.
The end-to-end experience is not perfect, and DoorDash still has a long way to go, especially in grocery, Xu admits.
“I always ask myself, why is grocery not a lot bigger? Why shouldn't it be even bigger than, say, restaurant?” Xu said. “Well, it's because the online delivery experience is just not yet good enough compared to the offline experience of buying it for yourself.”
DoorDash is closing that gap, according to Xu. The company has worked on making its service more accurate, more affordable and easier, but matching the in-store shopping experience requires ensuring every item is delivered without substitutions or out-of-stocks.
To this end, the ordering platform is working on an inventory management and fulfillment system with its grocery and retail partners, Xu said.
“I think if we can do that, I think then finally, you can actually unlock what is truly a magical experience where it's more similar to restaurant delivery, where, yes, there might be a small premium you pay, but at least you get exactly what you ordered, which is not the experience today,” Xu said.
