Why DoorDash’s billionaire co-founder delivers food orders to customers ‘to understand what people are going through’

On a recent afternoon in San Francisco, a DoorDash driver was circling the neighbourhood – first in his car, then on foot – trying to find the restaurant where he needed to pick up two orders. Finally, he Googled the location and realised DoorDash’s app sent him to the wrong address. It’s an error he vowed to fix, and he probably will. Because that worker was Andy Fang, DoorDash’s chief technology officer and one of the company’s three co-founders. “If it happens with one restaurant, it might actually be happening with a lot of other restaurants as well,” Fang said after he retrieved the orders and settled back into his car. “If we can see why that happened, maybe we can fix other issues too.” Fang is one of a growing number of executives who occasionally do the hourly work that makes their companies hum. Starbucks’ new CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, is a trained barista and puts in a half-day of work at a store each month. How a Chinese tech giant cracked food delivery by drone in urban Shenzhen Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Lyft CEO David Risher occasionally shuttle passengers. Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran has been spotted serving drinks and snacks on flights. Amazon recently relaunched a programme called the Associate Experience Week, which encourages employees to shadow operations workers for a week to gain a better understanding of their job. The programme is mandatory for some managers. But few companies have a programme as robust as WeDash, which requires thousands of salaried DoorDash employees in the United States, Canada and Australia to complete at least four deliveries per year. Employees are strongly encouraged to make deliveries monthly. They can use work time to complete those shifts, and they keep any money they make. “We just want to make sure that people who are working here, who are supporting our audiences, are understanding what people are going through,” Fang says. When they started DoorDash a decade ago, while they were still students at Stanford, Fang and the company’s other two co-founders – chief executive officer Tony Xu and chief product officer Stanley Tang – made all the deliveries themselves. It makes me feel better knowing that the people I work for are getting to experience first-hand what it’s like to work for them Elizabeth Bitter, a driver for DoorDash “We had to. There was nobody else to do them,” Fang says. “But what we quickly found out was that by doing these deliveries ourselves, we learned a ton of insights into what it actually took to get these deliveries fulfilled.” The company started WeDash in 2015 to make sure every employee was getting those insights. Fang says there are some exceptions; if an employee can’t drive, for example, they might visit merchants or work in the call centre. DoorDash has grown exponentially since then. In 2022, more than 6 million DoorDash drivers – all independent contractors – fulfilled 1.7 billion orders worldwide. DoorDash has expanded beyond restaurant delivery into convenience stores, groceries, pet shops and pharmacies. Fang, who makes deliveries for at least an hour each month – sometimes with Xu and Tang in tow – says he has made real changes to DoorDash’s app based on his experiences. When he was on the US East Coast recently, he set a time to make deliveries when he returned to California. But when he got home, he realised the time he had set was off by three hours because the app assumed he was still on the East Coast. He got that bug fixed. Fang also experiences drivers’ other frustrations. The wrong address in the DoorDash app cost him time delivering orders from Bonchon, a Korean fried chicken chain. On that afternoon, Fang only made US$15.50 (HK$120) for 51 minutes of work. DoorDash says that’s lower than the US$34 per hour that California drivers make on average, including tips. Is there room on the road for a third Hong Kong food delivery service? It’s also vastly lower than what Fang pulls in as CTO. His annual compensation in 2022 totalled US$2.79 million and Forbes pegged his net worth that same year at US$1.1 billion, illustrating the gap between those at the top of a company and those at the bottom. DoorDash and others recently pushed back against a new rule introduced in New York implementing a minimum pay rate for app-based food delivery workers that could nearly triple their average earnings in the coming years. DoorDash said it may pursue legal action. Still, the company is seeking ways to make drivers’ earnings more reliable. In June 2023, it announced a new Earn By Time mode, which will let drivers earn a guaranteed minimum rate for the time they spend on a delivery, not including tips. Drivers can still opt for an Earn Per Offer mode, which is how they have always been paid. Fang says he knows there are limits to how much he can understand the day-to-day work of the company’s drivers, which is why he also seeks feedback from a council of drivers and from other employees. Denise Rousseau, a professor of organisational behaviour at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says there is a lot of value in asking workers to do other jobs within their company. Having senior leaders participate, as DoorDash does, sends an even stronger message. “If you spend your own time on it, that’s not cheap talk any more,” she says. “You are trying to convey, ‘This is the focus of our business and we care.’” Why do people spend so much money on food delivery services? Elizabeth Bitter, who delivers for DoorDash in Broomfield, Colorado, didn’t know about the WeDash programme but has noticed updates in the app that make their job easier. DoorDash’s app used to ask if a delivery was good or bad, and if the driver felt safe or unsafe, after every delivery. Bitter appreciated the safety concerns, but filling out the survey slowed deliveries, so it was a relief when the app recently stopped requiring that information. Another recent update lets drivers unassign themselves from an order if they have to wait too long at a restaurant to get it. “It does make me feel better knowing that the people I work for are getting to experience first-hand what it’s like to work for them,” says Bitter, who makes an average of US$20 per hour on DoorDash.