About 20,000 consumers are already texting DoorDash to order food, and the company opened a waitlist for more on Tuesday as it officially unveiled Text DoorDash at its Dash Forward product event.

The feature replaces the app itself as the ordering interface. A customer texts what they want, and DoorDash's AI agent finds the item, builds the order and completes checkout using stored payment information. In a demo at the event, Aayush Sheth, DoorDash's head of applied AI, reordered his usual breakfast burrito in about a minute.

"I don't have to open the app, add all my customizations, remember what I even ordered last time," he said. "It's right here on text message."

The agent carries a memory of the customer's ordering history, so recommendations are tailored to past purchases. Sheth demonstrated more complex requests, including a group meal recommendation where one diner dislikes mushrooms and another has high cholesterol and wants a soy-based option. Customers can also text a photo of their refrigerator and ask DoorDash to look up a recipe and order the groceries they need. Down the road, DoorDash plans to let customers text to make reservations, process returns and communicate with their delivery person.

"We want to make it as frictionless as possible for users to come back," Sheth said.

Text DoorDash follows Ask DoorDash, an AI chatbot embedded in the DoorDash app that helps users narrow down nearby dining options, which went live in select markets in June.

The shift carries real implications for restaurant operators. The DoorDash app today functions as a classic e-commerce marketplace — carousels organized by cuisine, popular restaurants, and deals — where restaurants can pay for more prominent placement. Ask DoorDash and Text DoorDash break that model. The AI surfaces a curated set of restaurants based on the customer's stated need, and restaurants cannot pay to appear in those results, at least for now.

Early data suggests the AI channels are changing discovery, not just convenience. More than half of orders placed through Ask DoorDash go to a restaurant the customer has never ordered from before, according to DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang. When customers text for recommendations, "it doesn't just go to the name brands," Sheth said. "It's able to actually go to the mom-and-pop shops around the corner to help support these local economies."

That framing — independent restaurants gaining exposure without paying for ads — could lower the acquisition cost of marketplace customers for operators who historically relied on paid placement. Whether it stays free is an open question. A DoorDash spokesperson said of advertising within Ask DoorDash and Text DoorDash: "We'll share updates with advertising partners as the product evolves, it's still early days."

DoorDash also used Dash Forward to announce DashOS, a system that consolidates all of DoorDash's channels — third-party delivery, online ordering, reservations and more — into a unified marketing platform for operators. The stated goal: help restaurants convert marketplace customers into first-party relationships, through dine-in or web ordering. A customer who joins a restaurant's loyalty program on the DoorDash app might later receive an email with the new menu, then an invitation to a VIP wine tasting.

Parisa Sadrzadeh, DoorDash's vice president of strategy and operations, said in an interview that she could not say definitively how restaurant acquisition on the platform might change, given how quickly AI is evolving. But she said restaurants will have plenty of ways to attract new customers, including through DashOS.

"We're going to continue to serve merchants and be able to stay relevant in the services that matter most to consumers," she said. "On the flip side, we're going to continue to be a really great platform for restaurants … to build relationships with consumers."

She added that more announcements are coming related to ads, marketing and other agentic services for businesses — a signal that the monetization model around DoorDash's AI ordering channels is still being built.