- DoorDash has expanded the number of cities and towns in which it is offering hand sanitizer and gloves to delivery workers to help protect them from the coronavirus epidemic.
- Couriers in some 900 municipalities - representing some 40% of the company's total number of delivery workers - can now access the supplies.
- The company plans to make the sanitizer and gloves available to delivery drivers throughout the US by the end of the week.
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More DoorDash couriers now have access to the hand sanitizer and gloves the company has stockpiled for them, but half of all such workers still can't get such supplies from the company.
The food delivery startup notified delivery drivers Monday evening that it was making the supplies available in around 500 additional cities and towns, bringing to the total number to about 900, company spokeswoman Liz Jarvis-Shean told Business Insider. About 40% of the active couriers that work for DoorDash or Caviar, another delivery company that DoorDash bought last year, now have access to the supplies, she said.
"We're working to get that to 100% in the US before the end of the week," Jarvis-Shean said.
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu told Business Insider last week that the company had stocked up on tens of thousands of gloves and bottles of hand sanitizer to help keep its delivery workers safe during the coronavirus crisis. The company is offering the supplies, which have been hard to come by in many areas thanks to the pandemic, for just the cost of shipping.
Initially, however, DoorDash sharply limited the number of areas in which it was offering the sanitizer and gloves. As of Saturday, it was only making them available in some 400 cities and towns. At the time, the company was prioritizing those markets that had been hardest hit by the epidemic, Jarvis-Shean said at the time.
DoorDash-rival Uber has also said that it is offering "sanitization products" to its delivery workers. Those include disinfecting wipes and other "materials," company spokeswoman Meghan Casserly said. Uber is likewise focusing on the most "in-need markets," she said.
"Supplies, as you know, are extremely limited. We'll have more to share in the coming days," Casserly said, declining offer more details about Uber's program.
Numerous US cities have ordered that restaurants no longer allow or severely limit their number of dine-in guests in response to the pandemic, potentially boosting demand for food deliveries.
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- The world has flipped upside down in the 2 weeks since DoorDash filed for an IPO. The food-delivery giant's CEO says he's in no rush to go public.
Axel Springer, Insider Inc.'s parent company, is an investor in Uber.
