News from the Main Street Strong Restaurant Conference: New Products and Features to Help Restaurants Succeed and Thrive Online

Today marks the first day of our second annual Main Street Strong Restaurant Conference, and we are excited to be joined by over 1,000 restaurateurs from across North America to discuss industry topics ranging from recruitment and retention to innovation in restaurant technology.

In 2021, there is an increasingly digital opportunity for small restaurants, and to help partners meet that opportunity, we've continued to innovate to create new ways for restaurants to grow their reach and revenue through their online channels and according to their unique business needs. In 2020, we created Storefront, a product that enables any restaurant to turn their website into an eCommerce store and offer delivery to customers directly through their channels, completely free of charge (except payment processing fees). And earlier this year, we introduced industry-leading, new pricing changes designed to create more choices, flexibility and solutions across a portfolio of restaurants' needs and put more profits into the pockets of local businesses.

Now, we are announcing a series of new services designed to help restaurant partners accelerate their online success. Updates include new products and insights to better understand business performance on DoorDash and a new merchant support program to more quickly resolve complex, account-related issues. Here's what's new for our restaurant partners*:

World-class services to help restaurants grow in the digital world

Earlier this week we announced a new ad offering called Sponsored Listings, expanding self-serve marketing solutions beyond promotions and helping merchants increase their visibility - and sales - by appearing at the top of relevant search results in the DoorDash app. With DoorDash Self-Serve Sponsored Listings, merchants only pay for orders placed through their ad and not for ad clicks or impressions. Setting up campaigns via the Merchant Portal is seamless with no prior advertising experience needed. Rolling out now, restaurants can log into the Merchant Portal and navigate to the 'Grow Your Sales' tab to create a Sponsored Listing.

Improved, dedicated account support for businesses of all sizes

Restaurant partners have expressed that having a dedicated point of contact would help to more quickly resolve account-related issues. Today, after piloting this program for more than a year, we are introducing the Merchant Experience Partner Programto foster a more productive relationship between business operators and DoorDash and help partners more quickly and accurately resolve support issues. The program pairs restaurants with a personal support contact within DoorDash to assist with account-related needs, including Merchant Portal support, banking reconciliation, onboarding and activations and POS support requests. By the end of the year, we will have expanded the program to provide every restaurant in the U.S. on the Marketplace or Drive platform with a dedicated support contact to assist them when day-to-day challenges arise.

"Since being paired with our dedicated Merchant Experience Partner at DoorDash, we have been able to efficiently and effectively resolve our account-related needs," said Jenna Strange, Operations Manager of Virtual Brands for Mina Group. "Our restaurants are juggling many priorities at once, so the streamlined communication this program offers has been imperative to helping our virtual business grow and quickly pivot and improve different features of our accounts to assist that growth."

New tools and insights to better understand business performance on DoorDash and take meaningful action to accelerate success online

Restaurants look to DoorDash to provide them with data and tools to maintain healthy operations, learn from customer feedback and continually improve upon their business in order to provide the best experience to their online customers. To date, there hasn't been a way for restaurant operators to manage their business on the go which is why we are excited to announce DoorDash Business Manager, a mobile app for iOS and Android that will be available in the coming months, offering operators convenient ways to manage their DoorDash business from wherever they are. With the mobile app, restaurants can more easily track live order issues, monitor and assess real time data on sales and operations and manage their stores wherever they are. Sign up here to be notified when the DoorDash Business Manager is available.

Over the summer, we launched the Insights Hub to provide restaurant partners with access to data about menu performance, customer feedback, and daily operations. Building upon the Insights Hub, we're launching detailed operational reporting in the Operations Reporting Tab to help you better understand how you are serving your customers. We're also launching Report Builder in the coming weeks, which significantly expands sales and operational reporting, including the ability to export custom reports for the first time. Merchant partners can log into the Merchant Portal to view their insights now.

Continuing Main Street Strong commitments to help partnersBuild Back Stronger

We're proud to announce the creation of the Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund which aims to help restaurants impacted by state- or federally-declared natural disasters recover in their communities with relief grants distributed by Hello Alice. Additionally, global partners can now enroll in courses from the Main Street Strong Accelerator. Partners can visit here to access hours of content (available in English and Spanish) on topics including "Build a Financial Roadmap and Access Capital" and "Permits, Licensing, Regulations, and All Things Legal" with discussions led by industry experts such as Ellen Yin, co-founder and owner of High Street Hospitality Group.

We believe that our partners should embrace and invest in all sides of their business to truly thrive - from dine-in, to owned channels and third-party partners. A combination of the three will help restaurants continue to grow. We hope these new updates, coupled with the Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund, help partners succeed on and off platform across a combination of all of their channels and ways to meet customers.

*available in the US and rolling to other countries soon