DoorDash now lets US iPhone users order food by texting it in iMessage. There is no app to open and no menu to scroll. You message what you want, and DoorDash builds the cart and takes you through checkout inside the same thread.
DoorDash announced the feature as an extension of Ask DoorDash, the in-app assistant that has been live for about three months. It is a beta for now. US customers can apply by joining the waitlist at doordash.com/text, and about 20,000 people are already in the pilot.
The text experience runs over iMessage in Apple’s Messages app and starts on iOS, with Android support listed as coming soon. DoorDash matches your phone number to your account, so it can pull your order history and saved payment details when it builds a cart.
DoorDash says an average person in the US can choose from more than 800,000 menu items and grocery products on the platform. That estimate comes from a sample of 10,000 US consumers as of June 2026. The text option is meant to cut through that volume without any browsing.
Texting DoorDash in iMessage Covers Ordering, Reordering and Group Orders
You can text a specific dish, ask for a local recommendation based on your mood, or reorder a regular meal. DoorDash searches nearby restaurants, scans their menus and suggests a cart. It also texts you photos of the food it recommends, pulled from the restaurant’s store page in the DoorDash app.
Texting “order my usual” tells DoorDash to rebuild your Friday night order, including the dish, the modifiers and the restaurant. It keeps track of details like skipping cilantro or adding extra sauce, and DoorDash says it learns more the more you order.
The text thread also handles a few other jobs:
- Group orders with mixed dietary preferences and different quantities in a single order
- Optional proactive messages, such as asking if you want your usual coffee based on your daily habits
- Order confirmation and checkout inside the text thread, without opening the app
DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang described the goal in simple terms.
“Managing tasks like ordering lunch or groceries shouldn’t feel like work.”
Early Ask DoorDash numbers give some context for the push. In its first three months, customers found more than 40,000 new restaurants through the assistant. Nearly half of Ask DoorDash restaurant orders went to local spots the customer had never tried before, based on orders placed from June to August 2026.
Grocery Restocks Get a One-Tap Button and Cheaper Swaps
The same release adds two grocery tools to the DoorDash app. DoorDash says more than 30% of grocery orders placed through Ask DoorDash are routine restocks, so it built a shortcut for them. On your preferred grocer’s store page, a prompt now offers to reorder your usuals, and one tap builds the cart. You can still swap items out or add more before checkout.
Suggested swaps work while you build a cart from your preferred grocer through Ask DoorDash, with DoorDash scanning that store’s shelves in real time for cheaper versions of the same or equivalent products. DoorDash totals the potential savings right before checkout, and you can accept or decline each swap.
DoorDash shared its own figures on how grocery orders built with Ask DoorDash compare with traditional orders, based on data from mid August to mid September 2026:
- Grocery baskets are built 5 times faster
- Average basket value is nearly 50% higher than the same customers’ traditional orders
- Orders include about 60% more unique items
