After just four months of operation in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, food courier platform DoorDash has abandoned its rapid grocery delivery service, known as DashMart.

DoorDash had launched three miniature warehouses in November that stocked supermarket items for delivery by its riders, with plans to open 29 more by the end of this year.

However, the business model required expensive leases, logistics, and labor, which put the company in direct competition with the supermarket giants dominating the $100 billion sector.

Voly and Send, two of DoorDash’s rivals, had already collapsed under similar circumstances. DoorDash Australia, Canada, and New Zealand General Manager Rebecca Burrows had previously expressed confidence in the success of the rapid grocery delivery service, saying, “We wouldn’t be launching and expanding if we weren’t confident.”

However, DoorDash confirmed on Thursday that it would be closing the DashMart stores, resulting in 11 job losses. Burrows stated that DoorDash will be prioritizing selection for consumers and supporting its merchants and partners as it continues to invest in the grocery and convenience sector in Australia.

Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane customers can continue to access DashMart for another month, with the final day of operations scheduled for Friday May 5.

DoorDash, a $US24 billion US-listed company, will instead focus on doing deliveries for partner retailers such as Coles and 7-Eleven.

San Francisco-based DoorDash senior executive Kyra Huntington informed affected DashMart staff of their redundancies on Tuesday morning before announcing it to the broader DoorDash team in a local all-hands meeting that afternoon.

Some DoorDash Australia staff who worked on the DashMart project were cut just days after it launched as part of a round of global redundancies in early December. The rest were told earlier this week that their jobs had been slashed.

DoorDash’s closure of its DashMart operations also follows the end of Deliveroo, which pulled the plug on the Australian market last November. The food delivery platform was never profitable in Australia and incurred losses of more than $120 million in 2022.

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