DoorDash首席执行官托尼·徐（Tony Xu）在大约十年前造访加利福尼亚州一家小面包店时，萌生了创办外卖公司的想法。
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu got the idea for creating a food delivery company from a visit to a small California bakery about a decade ago.
当时还是斯坦福大学MBA学生的徐，正与未来的DoorDash联合创始人一起考察旧金山湾区的餐馆和零售商。一位面包师告诉他们，她手里有一本未完成的外卖订单记录，因为人手不足无法配送给顾客。“那对我们来说是一个非常奇怪的时刻，我说，‘外卖不是个新主意，’”徐在今年早些时候接受大卫·森拉（David Senra）播客采访时说道。
Xu, then a Stanford M.B.A. student, was touring Bay Area restaurants and retailers with his future DoorDash co-founders when a baker told them that she had a binder of unfulfilled delivery orders to customers she had no manpower to fill. “That was just a very strange moment for us where I said, ‘delivery’s not a new idea,’ ” Xu said in an interview earlier this year on the David Senra podcast.
从那个起点出发，徐、他的联合创始人以及他们旗下的九百万“大众骑手”（dashers）大军，将公司打造成为零工外卖领域的霸主。周四，徐宣布了公司13年历史上最大的一笔交易：以170亿美元收购Instacart。
From that start, Xu, his co-founders and their army of nine million “dashers” have built the company to be the kings of gig delivery. On Thursday, Xu announced the company’s biggest deal in its 13-year history, the $17 billion acquisition of Instacart.
“世界上最大的公司正变得更大，”他在投资者电话会议上表示。他说，这是发起进攻的正确时机。其股价在盘前交易中上涨了6%。
“The world’s biggest companies are becoming larger,” he said during an investor call. It was the right time to go on the offense, he said. Its stock jumped 6% in morning trading.
DoorDash——如今是一家市值780亿美元的公司——已将业务从餐饮外卖拓展至从梅西百货（Macy's）配送连衣裙、从好市多（Costco）配送纸巾、从CVS配送感冒药。收购Instacart使DoorDash在杂货配送领域占据关键地位，并获得了一个与沃尔玛（Walmart）和亚马逊（Amazon）等巨头竞争的平台。
DoorDash—now a $78 billion company—has been expanding beyond restaurants to delivering dresses from Macy’s, paper towels from Costco and cold medicine from CVS. The acquisition of Instacart gives DoorDash a key position in grocery delivery and a platform to compete with giants like Walmart and Amazon.
徐凭借一套战略手册，带领公司超越了Grubhub和Uber Eats等竞争对手，该手册包括与大大小小企业建立独家合作关系、推出留客激励措施，以及早期聚焦郊区市场，作为实现其服务市场网络密度的一部分。
Xu has led this company past rival third-party delivery services like Grubhub and Uber Eats with a playbook that included exclusive tie-ups with businesses big and small, incentives to keep customers and an early focus on the suburbs as part of achieving density in the markets it serves.
徐出生于中国，年幼时随父母移居美国，以便父亲能进入伊利诺伊大学攻读工程学。他目睹父母艰苦打拼。母亲曾是中国的执业医生，在大学城香槟市的一家中餐馆工作。徐曾表示，他在母亲端盘子时负责洗碗，由此对餐饮业产生了深刻的体会。
Born in China, Xu moved to the U.S. as a young kid so his father could attend the University of Illinois to study engineering. He watched his parents hustle. His mother, who had been a practicing doctor in China, worked at a local Chinese restaurant in the college city of Champaign, Ill. Xu has said he got an appreciation for restaurants by washing dishes while his mom served tables.
为了更好地融入当地环境，他将名字从徐迅改为托尼·徐。灵感来源是1980年代情景喜剧《谁是老板？》中的角色托尼·米切利。徐迅进入加州大学伯克利分校学习工业工程。在数字商务蓬勃发展之际，他曾在麦肯锡、eBay和Square任职。在斯坦福大学结识联合创始人后，团队于2012年推出了送餐服务PaloAltoDelivery.com。
To better fit in, he changed his name from Xu Xun to Tony Xu. The inspiration: the character Tony Micelli from the 1980s sitcom “Who’s the Boss?”Xu went to study industrial engineering at UC Berkeley. He spent time at McKinsey, eBay and Square as digital commerce was expanding. After meeting his co-founders at Stanford, the group launched delivery service PaloAltoDelivery.com in 2012.
2013年，他们在旧金山创立了DoorDash，徐迅担任首席执行官。公司利用红杉资本等风投机构的投资，通过优惠条件吸引餐厅入驻平台，并争取独家合同，使其菜单仅在DoorDash上架。随着业务从独立餐厅拓展至芝士蛋糕工厂等连锁品牌，这些合作关系变得尤为关键。
In 2013, they founded San Francisco-based DoorDash with Xu as CEO. The company used investments from Sequoia Capital and other VC firms to woo restaurants to the platform with deals, angling for exclusive contracts that would feature their menus just on DoorDash. Those tie-ups became particularly central to DoorDash as it moved from independent restaurants into chains like Cheesecake Factory.
一项关键策略是深耕郊区而非城市市场，因为优步外卖和Grubhub等竞争对手主要聚焦城市。城市虽餐厅和人口更多，但也带来了穿梭公寓楼、双排停车等复杂的物流难题。他们最初创业的帕洛阿尔托等郊区，车位充裕，司机进出便利。郊区居民渴望除中餐或连锁餐厅以外的更多餐饮选择。“你得走上好几英里，”徐迅在一档播客节目中说。
A key strategy was to deliver in the suburbs rather than cities, where competitors like Uber Eats and Grubhub focused. Cities offered more restaurants and people, but also complicated logistics like navigating apartment buildings and double parking. Suburbs, like Palo Alto where they first began their business, had abundant parking for drivers to get in and out. Suburbanites were clamoring for more food options beyond Chinese or chains. “You’d be walking for miles,” Xu said on the podcast.
投资资金开始降温，促使送餐公司寻求并购和上市。DoorDash于2019年吞并了高端送餐服务Caviar，以及多家物流公司。
Investor money started to cool, leading food-delivery companies to pursue mergers and IPOs. DoorDash swallowed up premium delivery service Caviar in 2019, along with several logistics companies.
DoorDash于2020年2月申请上市。次月，因疫情带来千载难逢的订单激增，DoorDash业务暴涨。当DoorDash于2020年12月上市时，徐迅及其联合创始人跻身亿万富豪行列。公司股价首日交易即从发行价102美元飙升至182美元。
DoorDash filed to go public in February 2020. The next month, DoorDash’s business surged as it got a once-in-a-lifetime swell in orders due to the pandemic. When DoorDash went public in December 2020, Xu and his co-founders became billionaires. The company’s stock shot up to $182 a share on its first day of trading from an initial price of $102.
随着 DoorDash 的扩张，徐旭所打造的品牌面临更多审视。多个州和城市针对该公司的薪酬做法采取行动，DoorDash 为此支付数百万美元和解。芝加哥指控该公司未经餐厅业主许可，将餐厅菜单发布在 DoorDash 平台上，并以具有欺骗性的低费用吸引顾客，随后费用却不断上涨。DoorDash 去年与芝加哥达成和解，并表示不再从事这些商业行为。
As DoorDash expanded, Xu faced more scrutiny of the brand he built. States and cities went after the company’s pay practices, with DoorDash settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits. Chicago accused the company of posting restaurant menus on DoorDash without the proprietors’ permission and luring in customers with deceptively low fees that later grew. DoorDash settled the Chicago lawsuit last year and said it no longer participated in the business practices.
2021 年，DoorDash 曾考虑收购当时在第三方杂货配送领域占主导地位的 Instacart，但最终未推进该交易，并于 2022 年与 Kroger（克罗格）达成协议，以拓展其在杂货领域的版图——这是一个高频消费场景，订单规模较大。
In 2021, DoorDash looked at buying Instacart, which had been the dominant third-party grocery delivery service at the time. It never pursued the deal and struck a deal with Kroger in 2022 to expand its reach into grocery, a habitual ritual with big order sizes.
DoorDash 股价陷入低迷，今年以来下跌 20%，有望创下自 2022 年以来最差年度表现。收购 Instacart 有助于增强其增长叙事，使 DoorDash 在杂货赛道成为更强劲的竞争者。目前超过 80% 的杂货购物仍在实体店进行。
DoorDash’s stock has been in the doldrums, down 20% so far this year, on pace for the worst year since 2022. The Instacart deal could help power its growth story and make DoorDash a more formidable player in grocery. More than 80% of grocery shopping is still conducted in stores.
但考虑到双方在第三方杂货配送领域均占据相当份额，该交易可能面临监管审查。
But the deal could face regulatory scrutiny given both parties will have a sizable stake in third-party grocery delivery.
针对监管挑战，徐旭周四表示，此次合并将有助于将配送和营销技术带给试图与最大平台竞争的中小型杂货商。他表示，Instacart 的品牌和平台将在交易完成后保留，因为该服务拥有许多忠实客户。“最大的公司正在吞噬越来越大的份额，”他说。
Asked about regulatory challenges, Xu said Thursday that the combination will help bring delivery and marketing technologies to smaller grocers trying to compete with the biggest platforms. Instacart’s brand and platform will be maintained after the deal, as the service has many loyal customers, he said. “The biggest companies are eating more and more of the pie,” he said.