Have you ever considered how far we’ve come from the days when milk was the only food product most people could get delivered to their doors? What a difference a few decades can make. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, third-party delivery platforms have been revolutionizing our relationship with local businesses for years, and no sector has faced as much upheaval as the restaurant industry. On this episode of Disruptors, an RBC podcast, host John Stackhouse sits down for a special one-on-one discussion with the CEO of DoorDash, Tony Xu. From a boy who immigrated to America with his family when he was just five years old, and helped his mother hold down three restaurant jobs, to the head of the biggest food delivery platform in North America, Xu's journey has been an extraordinary one. But it's the rapid evolution of the convenience economy his company helped usher in — the so-called "last mile ecosystem" — that has him more focused on the future than the past these days. What makes a city tick? What makes a city grow? What drives a city's economic engine? Those are just a few of the unlikely questions John and Tony will tackle over the course of their conversation. They'll also explore why food isn't actually a commodity, why people who live in the suburbs and those who live in cities have more in common than they think. And why data might be the most valuable thing to change hands every time we tap ‘place order’ on our favourite delivery apps.
To learn more about DoorDash, its philosophy, and its origin story, you can visit the company’s website. For details on its revenue during the pandemic, read this recent Bloomberg article. John mentioned two previous pieces of RBC research during the podcast, including; “Small Business, Big Pivot” and “Humans wanted: How Canadian Youth Can Thrive in the Age of Disruption”. RBC has also released an updated version of its report on how the pandemic has disrupted the economy, called “And Now the Reset: 9 ways COVID has changed consumers, and business, for the decade ahead.”