Delivery Apps Became Retail’s Same-Day Infrastructure
DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Eats have evolved from food-delivery apps into a shared logistics network for retail. Thousands of retailers now use their couriers and technology to offer same-day delivery without investing in warehouses, fleets, or their own delivery infrastructure.
From restaurants to almost every retail category
DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Eats each expanded beyond their original markets to connect consumers with groceries, convenience, home improvement, alcohol, party supplies, and general merchandise.
DoorDash now serves 44 of the top 100 U.S. retailers, after expanding into grocery, convenience, and home improvement.
Instacart connects more than 2,200 retail banners and nearly 100,000 stores, reaching more than 98% of North American households.
Uber Eats has consolidated grocery and general merchandise under its “Grocery & Retail” business, including partnerships with Home Depot and nearly 9,000 Dollar Tree stores.
The model is fundamentally different from Amazon’s. Rather than building new fulfillment centers, the platforms effectively turn existing retail stores into distributed warehouses. Products are already near customers, while gig workers provide the final-mile delivery.
Instacart says more than half of its orders are fulfilled by shoppers already in the store or within a mile of it. That proximity makes sub-one-hour delivery possible without requiring retailers to build a dedicated logistics network.
A valuable network — with growing costs and control
The economics have improved for the platforms. DoorDash posted its first annual GAAP profit in 2024, generating $123 million in net income on $10.7 billion of revenue. Instacart reported $457 million in net income.
With profitability established, however, the platforms have greater leverage to extract value from retailers.
Fees are only part of the equation. Commissions, payment processing, advertising, and other charges can make third-party delivery materially more expensive than a retailer's own fulfillment.
At the same time, platforms increasingly influence the customer experience and final price. A 2025 investigation by the Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union alleged that Instacart used pricing experiments that produced different prices for identical products purchased from the same store at the same time. Instacart subsequently said some retail partners had ended the tests.
The labor equation adds another pressure point
The couriers powering the network remain another source of cost and regulatory uncertainty.
California's Proposition 22 allows app-based drivers to remain classified as independent contractors under specified conditions. Meanwhile, New York City has imposed minimum-pay requirements on delivery workers, including grocery delivery, with the rate reaching $22.13 per hour-equivalent for pay periods beginning on or after April 1, 2026.
As more jurisdictions impose labor requirements, platforms face additional pressure on their delivery economics.
The strategic takeaway
Retailers are effectively renting a nationwide, same-day delivery network instead of building one themselves.
That trade-off is increasingly clear:
What retailers gain
Immediate geographic reach
Same-day and rapid delivery
No need to build a delivery fleet
Access to an established customer base
Store inventory functioning as local fulfillment capacity
What retailers give up
A share of every transaction
Greater dependence on third-party platforms
Less control over pricing and customer experience
Exposure to changing platform fees
Indirect exposure to delivery-labor regulation
The central shift is that delivery apps are no longer simply delivery vendors. They are becoming retail infrastructure.
And as that infrastructure becomes more indispensable, the strategic question for retailers is no longer whether they need fast delivery — it is how much control and margin they are willing to surrender to obtain it.