I am old enough to remember a time when exactly two foods could be delivered to your home with a phone call: pizza and Chinese.
If you lived in a small town, had relatives nearby or belonged to a caring church, you might also have food delivered to you if a loved one passed, you had a baby or you were a shut-in. Meals on Wheels has been delivering nutritious meals to seniors since 1954.
But that was it.
For most of my life, the promise of having every food whim fulfilled by a random stranger did not exist. In 2004, Grubhub began the smart phone app-based food delivery business. Food delivery apps really took off in 2013 when DoorDash was founded in Palo Alto, California. It’s worth noting here that Uber Eats fired up its own delivery service in 2014.
At the risk of sounding like an old Andy Rooney segment on 60 Minutes (Who? Younger readers can check this out to get a feel), I have lately contemplated food delivery and specifically DoorDash because of several unsatisfactory customer experiences.
Like Christmas and Billy the Lonely Boy in “The Polar Express,” DoorDash just doesn’t work out for me.
During a busy weekend in which we spent all day Saturday running errands and taking Carlton to various rehearsals and social engagements, I desired to, as we say in the South, “sit down to watch the ballgame.” Georgia was playing at Auburn, and I knew my boys would be texting me a running commentary.
I expressed willingness to drive to a local establishment and pick up nutrition for the whole family, but my Darling Beloved insisted I relax while she ordered DoorDash. Her love and concern for me knows no bounds.
My entire orientation toward DoorDash can be summed up in the word, “dubious.” I’ve witnessed enough instances of my DoorDash-inclined family members having issues that DoorDash is never my first dining option.
As has been documented in this space, I would just as soon eat leftovers. That said, if I am going to do the DoorDash thing, I would like to receive the food I have created the expectation of receiving.
So on this particular evening, we ordered through DoorDash hickory barbecue wings, lemon pepper wings and an order of fries from Wingstop. This allowed me to wait overly long for the food while I witnessed the worst attempt at officiating a college football game in the history of mankind.
Admittedly, I was hangry, but what was supposed to be Georgia playing football against Auburn was actually 13 minutes of game action and 3 hours and 47 minutes of referees gathered in huddles and looking at TikToks on tiny screens together, or something akin to that. And this isn’t just me being all Andy Rooney cranky. The SEC agreed that the officiating was bad and suspended the crew chief.
During the 38 minutes it took those SEC referees to get through the final two minutes of the first half, our DoorDash order arrived. Or at least a bag from Wingstop was left on our porch. This bag had an attached sticker that clearly said “one of two.”
Well, I guess DoorDash has never heard of the educational policy “No child left behind” from the George W. Bush administration, because bag two was left behind. And bag two was the crucial bag.
Bag one had the hickory barbecue wings and something called “boneless wings” (which are really just chicken nuggets) Wingstop threw in as some sort of special promotion. The crucial elements of our meal turned out to be in the forgotten bag two. I say “forgotten” because my working theory was that the driver decided his dinner that evening would be lemon pepper wings and fries.
My Darling Beloved attempted through DoorDash customer service to receive our wings, but practically speaking, this was not a viable solution. The quickly refunded us the money, but re-ordering and having lemon pepper wings would have taken longer than an SEC officiating crew fumble review.
I was forced to put some tater tots in the air fryer like some sort of pre-2000s barbarian and cook my own potato side dish in eight minutes. Infuriating.
Fast forward to Nov. 2. Again I was fulfilling my chief occupation of “Duber Driver” (Dad + Uber = Duber), and after a particularly intense tutoring session involving logarithms and exponential functions, Carlton’s heart was set on honey chipotle chicken crispers from Chili’s (which is somehow cool again with the teens.)
Like in the 1900s, we drove to the actual Chili’s restaurant where we were promptly seated and then ignored. After 12 minutes, we took back our power as consumers and left. I then begrudgingly let Carlton order from DoorDash what he would have eaten at Chili’s had they actually wanted to take our money and serve us food.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I will write about it in New South Essays.
As we navigated home in the rain, Carlton made multiple attempts to order said crispers of chicken from DoorDash, but the coveted honey chipotle variety was not available. To be fair, they weren’t available in the restaurant either because no one would take our order of said honey chipotle chicken crispers, but I digress.
We finally settled on the solution of ordering the chicken crispers and the honey chipotle sauce separate. Thinking the problem was solved, I went home and ate a delicious meal of leftovers: a quarter of a chicken enchilada, egg noodles, rice and chicken and steak fajitas without the tortillas. Exactly the kind of meal the loser on Chopped would come up with if they had less-than-ideal ingredients to work with.
In any case, when the food arrived, there was no honey chipotle sauce. My Darling Beloved even called the Chili’s to speak to the manager, only to learn that it wasn’t the DoorDasher’s fault. Chili’s was out of honey chipotle sauce. I suggested we make our own honey chipotle sauce because we had plenty of honey and no one really knows what a “chipotle” is. (“Chipotle” is actually Spanish for “burrito so big it bursts when you fold it.”) I just figured we could mix the honey with some hot sauce and be done. That turned out to not be the case. As of this writing, there are still three non-honey-chipotle chicken crispers in our fridge because who can eat chicken crispers dipped in something other than honey chipotle sauce?
Even though this misfire was not DoorDash’s fault, because we had ordered through DoorDash, there was nothing that could be done other than get a refund. The honey chipotle sauce craving went unmet.
Imagine my lack of surprise when I learned on Nov. 6 that DoorDash’s stock price tanked. Now economists and breathless reporters on the floor of the stock exchange will try to tell you it was due to consumer behavior and corporate earnings and other complicated factors involving math, but I’m here to tell you that it was most certainly attributed to lemon pepper wings and honey chipotle chicken crispers.
It’s not that consumers aren’t willing to overspend on food to have it delivered. We as a species have proven to be quite resilient at overspending for convenience. The fundamental problem with the DoorDash business model is the lack of accountability.
DoorDash is the middle man in the transaction, and, as such, they do not care if there is a problem with your order, no matter if it’s their fault or the restaurant’s. It’s not their concern. The worst outcome for them is that the dasher gets a bad rating and you get refunded a few dollars. DoorDash is banking on customers being addicted to convenience.
I don’t know if this stock price deal is a temporary setback or an indication that DoorDash is headed the way of Quibi, but I do know that I have zero trust in its ability to do the one thing it purports to do.
Innovation propels society forward, and for a hot minute during the pandemic lockdown, DoorDash was exactly what we needed to keep restaurants in business and keep us soothed with honey chipotle chicken. But DoorDash has lost its way. They are no longer the heroes we need, delivering joy. They are just a contemporary version of the 17-year-old Domino’s delivery driver racing across town, creating traffic accidents to bring you a pizza within 30 minutes.
All this Andy Rooneying has made me hungry. I think I’ll go whip up some leftovers and feast on garden peas, spaghetti noodles and non-honey-chipotle chicken crispers.
Do you have a DoorDash experience you need to get off your chest? Leave your story below and release your anger. It won’t help anything, but it will drive up New South Essays engagement score. You might feel a smidge better.
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