DoorDash rolled out a slate of new developments at its Dash Forward 2026 event. Among them are the ability to order by text message, new grocery restock and savings features, a custom drone delivery system and an expansion of its retail marketplace with returns handled by Dashers.
The company said it and Wolt – the Helsinki-based delivery platform DoorDash acquired in 2022 and operates as its international arm – have facilitated more than 14 billion lifetime consumer orders. In addition, since 2023 it has added 30 million retail products to the marketplace, with more than 500,000 products eligible for delivery in as little as an hour to the average U.S. consumer, per company data.
Text ordering and smarter grocery runs
Building on Ask DoorDash – the AI assistant launched in its app in June – DoorDash is bringing ordering to text messages. Consumers can text a craving or “order my usual,” and the assistant searches local options, builds a cart based on learned preferences and handles checkout inside the text thread. U.S. consumers on iOS can join a beta waitlist.
“Managing tasks like ordering lunch or groceries shouldn’t feel like work,” said Andy Fang, co-founder of DoorDash. “We built a personal shopper that helps you discover and compare thousands of items while identifying ways for you to save on DoorDash.”
The grocery updates aim at the routine trip. More than 30 percent of grocery orders through Ask DoorDash are routine restocks, the company says, so a customer’s preferred grocer’s store page now surfaces a one-tap prompt that rebuilds their usual cart.
A new Suggested Swaps feature scans the store’s shelves in real time, flagging cheaper equivalents and totaling potential savings before checkout for the shopper to accept or decline. DoorDash says baskets built with the assistant come together five times faster and average nearly 50 percent higher basket value with about 60 percent more unique items than the same consumers’ traditional orders.
DoorDash Air takes flight
The company unveiled DoorDash Air, a purpose-built drone delivery system piloting in Northern California with partners including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and San Francisco restaurant Momo N Curry. Rather than starting with the aircraft, DoorDash said it built the ground infrastructure first, loading systems, kitchen handoffs and packaging, so businesses of any size can deliver by air without changing how they operate.
“We didn’t start with a drone and ask what would fit,” said Harrison Shih, head of DoorDash Air. “We started with what people order and how local businesses actually operate, then built the entire system from there.”
About 80 percent of typical DoorDash restaurant orders are light and small enough for the aircraft to carry, the company estimates, with initial tests averaging restaurant-to-door delivery in under five minutes. The six-propeller aircraft’s cruising noise is limited to roughly that of a passing car at delivery height, and a winch handles pickups and dropoffs. Deliveries run through DoorDash’s Autonomous Delivery Platform, which has coordinated hundreds of thousands of lifetime autonomous deliveries and determines in real time whether a Dasher, its Dot robot or a drone is the fastest way to reach a consumer.
Retail brands, returns and the rest
DoorDash is adding brands including Macy’s, Anthropologie, The North Face, Vans and Timberland to its marketplace, expanding apparel, beauty and home goods delivery from hundreds of stores. A companion Dasher Returns service, live in select cities and expected nationwide in November, lets consumers schedule an eligible return for a flat $7.99, no box or label required, with a Dasher picking it up in as fast as 30 minutes and the refund processed at the store.
Other announcements from Dash Forward included:
- DashOS, a restaurant growth platform connecting marketplace, direct ordering, reservations, loyalty and marketing tools;
- DashBuddy, an AI assistant for Dashers that has resolved about 95 percent of questions from new Dashers and been used by more than 200,000 of them; and
- a DoorDash connector for corporate ordering built on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI applications to external services.
Early beta partners including Vercel, Cognition and Mercor are using the connector to let employees order team lunches or automatically restock office supplies through workplace AI tools, with orders still fulfilled by local businesses through DoorDash.
In 2025, more than 9 million Dashers earned over $20 billion globally, the company said.