DoorDash is unveiling new versions of its website and app today, putting each restaurant’s delivery experience front-and-center.
That’s happening through a new “Delight” score, which Head of Design Josh Abrams described as an “industry-first” rating — one that doesn’t just reflect the general quality of the meal, or the experience of dining in the restaurants, but rather the food that arrives on your doorstep.
To calculate the score, Abrams said DoorDash is looking at a number of data points, including customer feedback and restaurant popularity. The idea is to take data that DoorDash has already been collecting and boil it down to a single number that can help customers choose the restaurant that will provide the best delivery experience.
Some of that experience, however, isn’t the responsibility of the restaurant itself, since DoorDash (or rather, the independent contractors it works with) is the one making the deliveries. CEO Tony Xu said the company did “an extensive amount of work on getting the right attribution in this score.” So for example, “If there was one experience that went poorly, because maybe we were late on the delivery, we’re certainly not going to penalize merchants for that fact.”
The updated DoorDash also has a new design (one that’s responsive on the web, so it’ll adjust to your device and screen size), with the ability to sort restaurants based on price, speed and that new Delight score. And it’s going to start featuring food photography, with pictures taken by the DoorDash team itself.
All of this comes, by the way, comes just a couple of days after DoorDash announced that it has raised $127 million more (in what was reported to be a “down round”, with a lower valuation than its previous funding). Xu said that the back-to-back announcements, is “just how the timing worked out.”
