Dive Brief:
- DoorDash announced Thursday the launch of a conversational shopping assistant that builds a shopping cart based on a customer’s description of what they are looking for.
- With the new tool, called “Ask DoorDash,” grocery shoppers can also input a recipe link, photo from a cookbook or image of a shopping list to get a shoppable cart of food items.
- DoorDash said this new feature will reduce the hassle of cart building for e-commerce customers.
Dive Insight:
DoorDash’s new conversational commerce tool comes as retailers and e-commerce providers turn to agentic AI to help solve the pain points of online grocery shopping.
DoorDash customers can type in phrases like “healthy dinner for four under $40, no salad or chicken” to receive personalized recommendations for what to buy.
When serving up recommendations from a cookbook photo, Ask DoorDash will prompt people to check if they have staples needed for the recipe like butter or salt to help them avoid purchasing items they already have.
Once shoppers get their personalized shoppable cart, they can swap brands, DoorDash noted. Users can also prompt Ask DoorDash to reorder their last shopping cart, shop frequently purchased products and suggest new items based on past purchases.
For restaurant users, DoorDash said the new tool makes it easier to build a cart based on suggestions to meet dietary preferences, budget, group size or past orders.
Ask DoorDash relies on data about merchants’ in-stocks across restaurant and grocery items to help determine its responses, DoorDash noted. This matters, DoorDash said, because data on menus, prices, hours, delivery distances and inventory change rapidly.
Ask DoorDash is available in select areas on Apple smartphones for restaurant search and grocery shopping and will roll out to DoorDash Reservations — a soon-to-launch capability that will suggest restaurants — and to more users in the U.S. in the coming weeks, according to the announcement.
AI-powered grocery shopping is still in the very early stages. According to a benchmark report from AstraWorks, Amazon has the most advanced capabilities so far while many mainstream grocers rely on third-party firms like Instacart to connect with agentic shopping agents like ChatGPT.
