DoorDash (DASH.US) teamed up with OpenAI to launch ChatGPT shopping feature to face Instacart competition

The Zhitong Finance App learned that DoorDash (DASH.US) will launch a grocery shopping function within ChatGPT this week as part of its planned partnership with OpenAI; just a week ago, competitor Instacart announced the launch of a similar tool.

Through this integration, consumers can use the plug-in to ask the AI assistant for meal or recipe suggestions, and let the assistant add the required ingredients to the shopping list. When preparing to check out, users are redirected to DoorDash's own app, where they can make adjustments to the order before finalizing the purchase.

DoorDash, the takeaway platform with the largest market share in the US, did not start with its core business takeout, but instead chose to take the lead in online grocery shopping within ChatGPT. This is because “finding recipe inspiration and menu planning” is “one of the most popular uses of ChatGPT,” according to a DoorDash spokesperson.

The spokesperson said, “This partnership is aimed at satisfying consumers' established shopping habits and enabling them to generate orders on DoorDash through ChatGPT, which we believe will expand our overall opportunities.” The company representative added that in the future, after evaluating how to add value to users' AI chat experiences, they plan to expand the integration to categories other than groceries.

Grocery delivery is a rapidly growing market, and DoorDash has continued to invest more in recent years to break through food and beverage takeout boundaries and compete with rivals Instacart and Uber (UBER.US). Data analyst Mike Ryan said that as of the third quarter, grocery and other non-food orders (including retail products) accounted for about 17% of DoorDash sales, up from 12% in early 2023.

In October, OpenAI announced that developers will be able to build versions of their products within ChatGPT so that AI assistants can complete more tasks for users. DoorDash and Uber both appeared on the list of nearly 20 partner brands announced at the time, which meant that some of their features were already online and others would be launched within the year. DoorDash officially debuted on the platform just a week after Instacart launched a similar feature, but Instacart's ChatGPT integration went a step further — users can complete purchases directly in the chat.

The differences in how brands such as DoorDash and Instacart integrate with ChatGPT highlights that the way consumers search and use services online is changing. DoorDash has embedded order buttons on external platforms such as Google and Yelp, and a company spokesperson said its business “continued to grow at a faster pace and on a larger scale” after each partnership.

When asked why the checkout process was kept in the DoorDash app instead of directly embedded in ChatGPT, the spokesperson said, “No single channel can monopolize consumers' attention” and “any channel must replicate all of our end-to-end features if it wants to fully satisfy users.”

The spokesperson also emphasized, “The value of DoorDash is not about where you place your order, but because it covers the whole process of evaluation, personalization, fulfillment, and support.”

Also, this week, DoorDash is also testing an independent artificial intelligence social app to help users find restaurants. The new product, called Zesty, began public testing in New York and San Francisco on Monday.