After more than four years of distributing Walmart’s merchandise to consumers, DoorDash is ending its collaboration with the retail behemoth. Business Insider was the first outlet to break the story. Insider was informed by sources with knowledge of the situation that DoorDash terminated its agreement with Walmart because it was no longer mutually beneficial and the delivery service wanted to put more emphasis on “its long-term client relationships.”
In a statement to TechCrunch, a DoorDash representative said, “We’d like to congratulate Walmart for their collaboration and are looking forward to continuing to create and support for businesses in the years ahead with our leading Marketplace and Platform capabilities.”
This month, DoorDash allegedly gave Walmart a 30-day notice and a letter to cease their collaboration. In September, the termination will become effective.
In an email to TechCrunch, a Walmart representative said, “As for our agreement to part ways with DoorDash, we’d like to thank DoorDash for their partnership and support of our customers the past several years.”
With the termination, a relationship that started as a trial in April 2018 to deliver Walmart goods to consumers in the Atlanta metropolitan region would come to an end. Since then, the alliance has grown to include all 50 states.
Despite working with third-party delivery services like DoorDash, Walmart has also been concentrating on expanding its own delivery capabilities. For example, on Thursday, Insider reported that Walmart was buying Delivery Drivers, the company that runs the Spark platform, which uses gig workers to deliver orders to customers. According to a spokeswoman for Walmart, Spark now provides the majority of Walmart deliveries and has grown to be the company’s top delivery service supplier.
On the other side, DoorDash has been developing its DoorDash Drive platform, a business-to-business solution that connects businesses with drivers via their own website or app.
While DoorDash’s deal with Walmart is coming to a stop, the business has gearing ready to engage with another prominent brand, Facebook parent Meta. This week, DoorDash announced that it is now testing a service called DoorDash Drive that would let its drivers pick up and deliver things from the Facebook Marketplace to consumers. The test service is presently available from DoorDash and Meta in a number of American cities.
