Announcements

Introducing New Ways for Consumers to Easily Discover Popular and Trusted Eats in Their Neighborhood

New restaurant review features and lists empower consumers to order with confidence, saving thousands of hours annually of decision fatigue searching for what to eat.

5 min read
6/13/2022
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At DoorDash, we build innovative ways for consumers who value convenience to access anything in their neighborhood with the touch of a button. We connect them with local shops and restaurants to choose their next meal or order home essentials they need so that they can return to spending time on what they enjoy doing most.

The possibilities are endless, but scrolling on the app doesn’t have to be. Today, we are launching new ways to rate, review and discover the best in every neighborhood while also celebrating and spotlighting our most loved restaurants on DoorDash:

  • Most Liked Items – Find trusted recommendations from locals at a glance with the “most liked” tags, rate new favorite dishes, and save over 400,000 hours annually, reducing decision fatigue when searching for what to eat

  • Written Reviews – Read other customers’ valuable feedback or share your own recommendations directly in the app

  • Top 10 Lists – Peruse curated, dynamic lists that surface the most popular, trending and top-rated restaurants nearby from Top Breakfast Spots to Top New Restaurants

  • Most Loved All Stars – Find customer favorite restaurants that consistently make sure orders are right, on-time, and always delicious

“We’re always thinking about how we can make the shopping experience even more frictionless and relevant for our customers,” said Helena Seo, Head of Design at DoorDash. “With the launch of the Most Liked Items feature, we’re saving consumers over 400,000 hours annually, reducing decision fatigue when deciding what to order. We’re excited for consumers to find the delight in discovering new restaurants and dishes, trusted and loved by locals.”

Most Liked Items

To help consumers avoid asking the dreadful question “what do we want for dinner?” and easily spot the best dishes based on ratings from locals, we created the “most liked” tag to surface top-rated eats customers love in their neighborhood. After ordering on DoorDash, consumers can rate the items from their order by tapping a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ icon. A restaurant’s three items with the highest number of ‘thumbs up’ ratings are displayed on the menu with a “most liked” tag. Since we began piloting this feature, we’ve seen that in the US, consumers are submitting more than 2.5 million item ratings per week, on average.

Written Reviews

We’re excited to introduce written reviews of restaurants to help consumers discover new restaurants and cuisines on the app while equipping merchants with valuable customer feedback. Public written reviews enable customers to explore detailed feedback and recommendations from their community to discover spots locals are loving directly on the DoorDash restaurant page, saving time toggling between multiple apps to research restaurant reviews.

As we strive to develop more technology that empowers merchants to thrive on our platform and reach new customers, we believe that accessing valuable customer feedback is vital to ensuring customer satisfaction, menu quality, and supporting growth in customer adoption and retention. With access to restaurant reviews and item-level ratings, merchants can now easily and quickly identify exactly what their customers love to eat at their restaurants, adjust their inventory accordingly, and optimize their staff’s training.

“I’ve gotten important feedback from the reviews and it’s helped me make our process better and coach my staff accordingly,” said Scott Miller, franchise owner of Aloha Poke. “I think reviews are good. If it’s a new customer, it would give them better visibility into what other people are ordering and what the most popular items are on the menu.”

Research shows that consumers are more confident in where and what they eat when they see reviews from their peers. Since rolling out public written reviews for restaurants in November of 2021, DoorDash has received more than 7 million public reviews, building upon the trust and confidence that restaurant-goers place in DoorDash’s customer feedback and local favorites.

Top 10 Lists

With millions of feedback, reviews, and orders that occur daily on DoorDash, Top 10 lists leverage DoorDash’s wealth of real-time data from consumer ratings and order volume to showcase the most popular, hottest, and best-rated restaurants to consumers nearby. These lists are dynamic and ever-evolving to further delight and inspire new choices of restaurants or dishes. Consumers contribute and help to surface the top-rated restaurants which are then incorporated into the “Top 10” Lists.

Most Loved All Stars

We’re excited to celebrate top-rated local restaurants that go above and beyond for their customers’ online orders, time and time again with the launch of the Most Loved All Stars. Between the food, the service, and the delivery experience, creating a top-notch customer experience is no small feat.

Today, DoorDash also unveiled its first annual awards list honoring the top 100 Most Loved All Star Restaurants in the United States for 2022. Most Loved All Stars were found by analyzing data from restaurants that achieved Most Loved status for at least ten months from April 2021 to April 2022.

These are just a few ways in which DoorDash aims to empower consumers to explore and delight in the discovery of restaurants and dishes that locals are loving on the DoorDash page. Our 2022 Restaurant Online Ordering Trends Report shows diners are not creatures of habit with 60% of customers ordering from a new-to-them merchant on DoorDash in Q1 2022 (compared to the merchants they ordered from in Q1 2021). Consumers are also adventurous when ordering for delivery or takeout with only 8% saying they’d never try a new menu item while 32% often try new menu items.

We look forward to developing more products that align with the needs of consumers while empowering our local communities and the businesses that are the lifeblood of those communities, to thrive.