While everyone was watching the Amazon-Walmart-Instacart cage match, DoorDash pulled ahead. The company is now #1 in U.S. third-party grocery and retail order volume as of late 2025 — and a string of moves in 2026 suggests it's not slowing down.

TD Cowen initiated coverage Monday with a buy rating and a $225 price target, calling out DoorDash's "expanding international presence, growing grocery and retail mix, and emerging ads and commerce offerings" as catalysts. The analyst note highlights what the company's execution over the past six months has made increasingly clear: DoorDash isn't just a food delivery app anymore.

The Grocery Land Grab

DoorDash added 33 new U.S. grocery partners since late 2025, including regional players like Schnucks, Harps Food Stores, FreshDirect, and Market of Choice. The marquee addition: nearly 2,700 Kroger stores launched on DoorDash last October, making Kroger the largest grocer on the platform.

In Canada, a partnership with Empire Company Limited brought more than 1,000 stores across 10 provinces onto the marketplace — one of the company's largest international grocery expansions to date.

But the most strategically interesting move is DashMart Fulfillment Services, where DoorDash's network of owned-and-operated DashMart locations handle inventory management, picking, packing, and delivery for third-party brands. CVS, Party City, and soon Kroger are already using the service. It's DoorDash's answer to Amazon's fulfillment flywheel — own the infrastructure, then rent it out.

10,000 Robots by Year-End

The autonomous delivery piece is where things get sci-fi. DoorDash and Coco Robotics have expanded their partnership to Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, with Coco's next-generation Coco 2 robots — launched in February — representing the shift from human-guided robotics to full autonomy.

The numbers are ambitious: DoorDash is on track to deploy more than 10,000 delivery robots in 2026. These aren't the slow sidewalk coolers of two years ago. Coco 2 travels at up to 20 mph and is designed as a "general-purpose urban robotics platform" for everything from restaurants and grocers to pharmacies and local retailers.

For grocery and convenience retailers, the unit economics story is the compelling part. DoorDash expects grocery and retail unit economics to turn positive in the second half of 2026. Autonomous delivery is how they get there — removing the human driver cost from the most expensive leg of the supply chain.

What This Means for the Industry

DoorDash's grocery push is reshaping competitive dynamics. Instacart, long the default for grocery delivery, now faces a competitor with a broader merchant network, its own fulfillment infrastructure, an emerging retail media business, and a robotics fleet. Amazon Fresh has struggled with profitability. Walmart's GoLocal third-party delivery service hasn't scaled as fast as expected.

DoorDash's playbook is classic platform strategy: aggregate demand, build infrastructure, then monetize through advertising and fulfillment services. The grocery delivery wars are far from over, but for the first time, the leading contender isn't one of the traditional grocery or ecommerce giants — it's a company that started delivering burritos.