DoorDash: DashRoots

Back in June I received an e-mail from DoorDash introducing something they called “DashRoots.” Allow me to quote the entire description of the concept from that original June e-mail:

“Thank you for all that you do to empower local economies by Dashing!  DoorDash is proud to announce the launch of DashRoots—an advocacy network that empowers local voices across the communities we serve. DashRoots will harness the voices of Dashers, merchants, and consumers to advocate for pragmatic policies that will improve their lives, from protecting and strengthening independent work, to helping local businesses grow, to investing in programs that can end hunger and promote public safety.

Too often, the voices of Dashers are not at the table when policies around app-based work are being debated. For instance, a recent survey showed that 86% of Dashers prefer the flexibility of independent work. Protecting flexible work is key to helping Dashers thrive in the modern economy, and DashRoots will empower these voices to engage lawmakers and have a direct say in the policy-making process.

DashRoots members will have access to resources like policy advocacy workshops, professional development webinars, local community meet ups, and opportunities to give back to their communities. They will also have opportunities to have a direct say in the legislative process.”

As someone with a personal and professional interest in “policies around app-based work,” I naturally signed up right away. A few weeks later I missed a call from someone at DoorDash about the program, but I never called her back and didn’t think any more about it until August.

At the beginning of August I received an invitation to the inaugural DashRoots event in Washington DC. It was going to be hosted at one of celebrity chef Jose Andres’s mid-tier restaurants, so I naturally RSVP’d right away, thinking I’d get a decent meal out of it if nothing else. The event turned out to be something quite unexpected.

Advocacy of what to whom?

To explain my surprise at the event, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at how different players view each other in the DoorDash ecosystem.

• Workers’ and customers’ primary relationship is with DoorDash. Delivery offers are made by DoorDash at some upfront fee to customers (plus optional tips) for some guaranteed pay amount (plus the possibility of “hidden” tips). Workers and customers have only glancing relationships with each other (whose data is only visible in the brief window between picking up an order and delivering it) and with restaurants (where orders constitute an anonymous stream for both restaurant and delivery workers). That’s not to say that customers, workers, and restaurants are undifferentiated: on the contrary, there are obviously customers and workers who are better and worse at giving and following delivery instructions, and restaurants that are better and worse at processing orders. But they do not constitute an ongoing relationship in the same way a worker is employed by DoorDash or a customer places orders with DoorDash.

• Restaurants’ primary relationship is also with DoorDash. Restaurants can’t decide who is assigned to pick up orders and, to the best of my knowledge, can’t blackball specific customers or workers either. DoorDash sends them orders and workers, then pays them whatever is left after taking their cut of the order amount.

• DoorDash is in a different position. It imposes conditions on its workers and restaurants, but in turn has conditions imposed on it by a range of federal, state, and local governments.

Looking at this structure, you can see how ambiguous the concept of an “advocacy network” is.

As a worker, I have a range of issues I would like to advocate for to DoorDash, my employer. For example, I would like DoorDash to have restaurants categorize their menu items by size, and then only offer me orders that fit in the bags I have so that I don’t get offers to deliver extra large pizzas (or the bizarre oblong pizzas sold by one of our local pizza chains). Right now I simply decline most orders from pizza restaurants, which hurts my acceptance rate. If those orders were filtered out, then I would be offered more orders I’m capable of fulfilling.

A customer who often received hot deliveries that had cooled down en route likewise might want to advocate to DoorDash to add an option to pay more for a “priority” order that would be assigned to a worker as their only order, so that it would arrive hot and fresh, instead of at the end of a long string of orders all over town.

A restaurant that often received complaints about spilled food or damaged orders might want to advocate for a similar option to have only experienced workers deliver their orders. Fancy restaurants might happily pay a higher fee to DoorDash in order to ensure the quality of the food that reaches their customers.

DoorDash has something entirely different in mind.

DashRoots lobbies the government, not DoorDash

I went the inaugural DashRoots event with a list of grievances and annoyances, some petty, some serious, expecting it to be a listening session between workers and DoorDash representatives. I didn’t take seriously the possibility of changing anything, but I figured the world is run by the people who show up, so I showed up.

Instead of listening to their workers, the DashRoots event was in fact a lecture at us. The centerpiece of the event was a slide presentation with three bullet points that had been through the PR machine so many times as to be almost inscrutable. I didn’t jot down the exact wording, but they were roughly:

• “Preserve worker flexibility.”

• “Give restaurants options.”

• And “deliverable and nondeliverable goods.”

These koans are not, in fact, empty signifiers. Each of them is very specific DoorDash policy priority, passed through the intestinal tract of an expensive public relations firm.

“Preserve worker flexibility,” is the easiest one. As you’ve probably guessed, this has nothing to do with preserving worker flexibility and instead refers to DoorDash being allowed to continue misclassifying their delivery workers as independent contractors. DoorDash’s desire to continue their current employment model is inverted into a preference of their employees for “flexibility.”

“Give restaurants options” is trickier because it could refer to almost anything. Give restaurants options over what? Even at the DashRoots event the speaker didn’t come right out and say what the policy question was, instead referring to the three tiers of pricing DoorDash charges restaurants. It sounds like at each price point, the restaurant gets a different delivery distance and perhaps other benefits like higher ranking in the DoorDash search engine. All this is relevant because during the pandemic, DC capped food delivery commissions at 15%. That cap has since expired and DoorDash has raised their commissions accordingly. They want to keep it that way.

“Deliverable and nondeliverable goods” is the most cryptic of the three, and again refers to a very specific local policy grievance. The District of Columbia and Virginia allow the delivery of alcoholic beverages; Maryland does not. DoorDash wants Maryland to legalize alcohol delivery, turning a “nondeliverable" into a “deliverable.”

Astroturfing and ventriloquism

The game DoorDash is playing here is simple. While restaurants and delivery workers have grievances with DoorDash, DoorDash has no reason to listen to or address those grievances because DoorDash imposes the conditions restaurants and workers have to operate under.

With reference to the government, on the other hand, DoorDash is the one in the position of having conditions imposed on it. Their two options are to comply with the law or to change it. Compliance being out of the question, their plan is to change it. To change it, they are using the twin weapons of astroturfing and ventriloquism.

Astroturfing is the time-honored tradition of generating an artificial perception that there is a widespread sentiment in favor or against some policy. In DoorDash’s case, they literally brought sheets of paper, envelopes, and stamps to this DashRoots event, apparently in the hope that they’d walk out with a stack of envelopes addressed to Congress insisting workers like being misclassified, or workers are desperate to deliver alcohol in Maryland. They walked out empty-handed, obviously.

In the case of astroturfing, the letters really would be written by delivery drivers, albeit ones who are told exactly what to write. Ventriloquism is when DoorDash insists on describing its own preferred policies as the preferred policies of its workers or restaurants. DoorDash wants to be able to charge 25% commissions, but it is restaurants that are desperate for options. DoorDash wants to misclassify workers, but it is workers who are desperate for flexibility.

Of course, if anyone wanted to know what delivery workers actually think about misclassification, or restaurants actually think about delivery commissions, or Marylanders think about alcohol delivery, all anyone has to do is hire a polling firm to ask them. Nobody needs to have their voice channeled through DoorDash to be heard. The fact that DoorDash insists that it is the true voice of its workers and its restaurants is just a way of making sure DoorDash’s own policy preferences are the ones that get heard loudest.