DoorDash delivers 30-minute groceries from Albertsons

San Francisco-based delivery company DoorDash announced a partnership on Feb. 17 with the Boise-based Albertsons Companies for 30-minute grocery delivery in select markets.

The 30-minute delivery is available as of today (Feb. 17) in 20 cities across the country. The Idaho Business Review (IBR) fired up the DoorDash app on an iPhone, found the 30-minute service available for both the original Albertsons location at 16th and State Street and for the Meridian Albertsons Market Street store on Fairview Avenue. The IBR did not test all Albertsons locations in Treasure Valley.

According to emails from both Albertsons and DoorDash, the 20+ metropolitan centers where the 30-minute delivery is now available are: Albuquerque, Anchorage, Boise, Chicago, Dallas, Denver/Boulder, Des Moines, El Paso, Hawaii, Las Vegas, the Los Angeles metro, New Orleans, the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Reno, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Southern California/Los Angeles and Spokane.

To bring up the 30-minute service, a customer must choose “Groceries” and “Under 30 minutes” on the DoorDash app. We noted that the app adjusted smoothly to point to the relevant Albertsons-owned chain in different cities, like the Safeway store at 5100 in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland, California, and the Jewel-Osco on Chicago Avenue, in Evanston, Illinois. Albertsons-owned chains where the service is active will have 6,000 items available for delivery.

Customers using DoorDash to order express delivery from Albertsons can tie their DoorDash app to their local Albertsons-owned grocery brand loyalty program, like the Safeway for U program, including access to all Albertsons loyalty discounts and rewards. IBR confirmed this feature was active and working when our test iPhone identified the correct Albertsons rewards program associated with the phone without having to open the Albertsons app.

There is one big caveat that goes with the express delivery through DoorDash: the 30-minute delivery time is not guaranteed. Each store in the express delivery program displays an estimated delivery window and some are in excess of 30 minutes. The longest the IBR spotted was 35 to 45 minutes in Evanston, Illinois, for an apartment on Dempster Avenue, three blocks away. We observed the time went up to 36-to-46 minutes when the Chicago-metro rush hour began on the evening of Feb. 17.

The 30-minute express delivery service is the third partnership program for DoorDash and Albertsons. The two firms launched two programs last year, one to deliver alcohol from Albertsons. The other is the DoubleDash service, where a customer can add a meal from a local restaurant or additional shopping request at another store when completing a grocery order.

The Albertsons and DoorDash partnership for express grocery delivery is not the first in this new marketing space. According to Grocery Dive, Instacart started its own 30-minute grocery service in May 2021 and grocery rival Kroger, which owns the inland northwest Fred Meyer chain, partnered with Instacart in September to offer a similar delivery service called Kroger Delivery Now. These sorts of services have been popping up since before the pandemic started, like the Walmart Pick-Up service, but the arrival of COVID-19 really accelerated the demand for pick-up and delivery options. Both the traditional retail giants like Kroger and Albertsons and the new kids in town like GoPuff, Getir and Grubhub Goods are now competing across this new service market.