DoorDash’s offer of $17 billion to buy Instacart, announced last month, could consolidate the grocery and restaurant delivery business in the United States and abroad, a deal with direct consequences for the thousands of Dallas-area restaurants, grocers and convenience retailers that depend on delivery platforms for revenue, as covered by NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth in its report on the shifting delivery landscape.
The companies said the tie-up would combine DoorDash’s global reach and expertise in logistics with Instacart’s purpose-built technology and long relationships with grocers. It could also help the combined company better compete with rivals moving into restaurant delivery, as grocery and restaurant ordering converge into a single competition for consumers’ delivery dollars.
Competition is intensifying from every direction. Amazon said Thursday that it has agreed to add Uber Eats to its Prime membership program in the U.S., allowing members to order from hundreds of thousands of restaurants directly on Amazon.com or in the Amazon app with no delivery fees for orders over $25. At launch, Prime members can get $20 off the first two Uber Eats orders of $25 or more, eligible for the first 14 days.
The Uber Eats tie-up is Amazon’s second restaurant delivery partnership. In 2024, Amazon added Grubhub for Prime members; that offer will wind down when the Uber Eats partnership kicks in, the company said. Andrew Macdonald, president and chief operating officer of Uber, said the companies built an experience for Prime members designed to make restaurant delivery feel as natural, convenient and affordable as ordering anything else on Uber Eats.
Walmart, meanwhile, has been building its own restaurant delivery capability. In its first deal with a restaurant partner, the retailer partnered with Subway, its largest in-store restaurant tenant, this past summer, and has since expanded to select Dunkin’ and Papa Johns locations, reaching 2,400 restaurant locations on its delivery platform. Since launching with Subway, 65% of those orders have included other items from Walmart, according to Greg Cathey, Walmart’s senior vice president of e-commerce transformation — a figure that illustrates why retailers are bundling restaurants into grocery apps.
For Dallas merchants, the consolidating market cuts both ways. Larger platforms promise more reach and better advertising tools, but restaurants have long complained about commission rates that can exceed 25% per order, and a smaller set of dominant players could increase pressure on merchants to accept terms. Local restaurant groups have pushed for fee caps in cities across the country, though Texas has largely left the market to set rates.
The delivery wars also matter for the region’s gig workforce, among the largest in the country, where couriers for DoorDash, Uber Eats and Instacart juggle multiple apps. Consolidation could change how shoppers and drivers are dispatched, and labor advocates are watching whether the merged companies standardize pay models across grocery and restaurant delivery.
Antitrust review will shape the deal’s fate, as regulators examine whether combining the leading restaurant delivery app with the leading grocery delivery platform concentrates too much power over fees and consumer choice. For now, Dallas businesses face a practical reality: the platforms they depend on are getting bigger, the perks are getting richer, and the competition for the delivery customer is only intensifying heading into the holiday season.
