DoorDash, the food delivery startup, announced on Wednesday (Aug. 8) that it has launched DashPass, a new subscription service that helps users save money by giving them unlimited access to restaurants in their area.
With the service, which costs $9.99 a month, users get free delivery on orders of $15 or more. The company said in a blog post that DashPass membership pays for itself with just three orders each month. What’s more, customers can cancel the service whenever they want.
“For just $9.99 per month, you can receive unlimited $0 delivery fees from family favorites like Wendy’s, The Cheesecake Factory, California Pizza Kitchen, White Castle and many more — just look for the DashPass checkmark,” DoorDash said in the blog post.
The new service comes amid big expansion at the delivery food startup. Earlier this year, DoorDash received a $535 million investment from SoftBank, Sequoia Capital and Singapore-based sovereign wealth fund GIC, bringing the food delivery company a $1.4 billion valuation. DoorDash plans to use the funding to expand into additional cities this year.
The funding will also enable DoorDash to boost its market share, said CEO Tony Xu at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, according to Fortune. The company currently serves around 1,200 cities in Canada and the United States, and plans to add as many as 600 cities in 2018.
Added Xu, “We have long ways ahead in terms of serving the millions of restaurants out there.” The funding will also help DoorDash fend off its rivals, which include Grubhub (which bought Yelp’s Eat24), Postmates, Uber Eats, Square-owned Caviar and Amazon.
In addition, DoorDash is partnering up with Walmart to give businesses an option over Instacart. The DoorDash alternative will allow the business to maintain its direct, face-to-face relationship with the consumer while serving as the back-end network that firms can tap to get their goods delivered. The pilot will roll out in Atlanta, and DoorDash hopes to become the omnichannel key for physical retailers that want to add a delivery button to their list of services offered. Lots of firms want delivery, but not every firm has the desire or resource base to build its own network.