There’s a grocery store located in the high traffic King Street area where you won’t find any locals shopping through the aisles. Instead, you’ll find Doordash delivery drivers gathered around outside, but even they can’t enter.
This store, located at King Street and Strachan Avenue, is exclusively for DoorDash users and the only way to buy groceries is through the food delivery app.
At the building's entrance, there’s a small, grey waiting room. On the wall is a notice that reads, “Not open to general public” and “No public restrooms.”
Toward the back of the waiting area is a pair of sliding windows, the kind that drive-thru employees pass burgers through. Beyond that are shelves upon shelves of food like any normal supermarket.
The only people pushing grocery carts in this store are employees. They shop from someone else’s grocery list and package items into brown paper bags, to be handed to an awaiting bike courier.
Just over two years ago, DoorDash and Loblaw inked a deal to create the “PC Express Rapid Delivery” model to provide same-day grocery delivery in select cities. DoorDash provides the gig workers delivering the food while Loblaw provides the groceries.
Some of these rapid delivery services are embedded in existing Loblaw grocery stores, which average shoppers can enter, but others are operated as fulfillment warehouses and are restricted from the public.
Residents who live near the DoorDash store on King Street said they find it weird there’s a supermarket in the neighbourhood that they’re not allowed inside.
“It’s odd,” said Kim, who asked that TorontoToday only use her first name. “It's kind of weird that it's right next door and I can't just pop in.”
Kim said her neighbours share her frustrations. She’s lived on King Street for 24 years and misses the days when a Shopper’s Drug Mart inhabited the spot where the DoorDash grocery store now stands.
She said the Shoppers there was “very handy” for quick grocery runs.
“There's times when you want to just run and grab something and there's nothing super close by,” she said.
For residents on King Street in the West Queen West neighbourhood, the main grocery options are Farm Boy near Bathurst and Front streets, or the newly-rebranded No Frills at Ossington Avenue and Shaw Street.
But locals who spoke to TorontoToday complained the Farm Boy can be overpriced and the No Frills is too small to have a good selection of products. The closest large and budget-friendly grocery store is in Liberty Village, which Kim said can be hard to reach on foot because she has to use the King-Liberty Pedestrian Bridge, which is often plagued with elevator issues.
Another nearby resident, Lara Ribiero, said she doesn’t mind the presence of the DoorDash grocery store. She prefers to shop at Farm Boy, anyway.
But for David, who asked that TorontoToday only use his first name, finding cheap groceries in the area is a struggle without a car.
“This area is a little bit more on the pricier side,” he said. “I used to have a No Frills near me when I used to live further east. I do miss that convenience and [those prices].”
He said the DoorDash grocery store would “better serve” residents if it also offered in-store shopping.
“In my opinion, it negatively impacts the residents in this area because you’re paying these fees for the convenience of having your groceries delivered when, if that were just converted into a normal grocery store, people here … could just walk down and get the groceries themselves,” David said.
Kim said she’s joked with her husband about becoming a DoorDash delivery person “so that we can order our own stuff and deliver it to ourselves.”
She admitted she and her husband have used the delivery service when it was late at night and all the other grocery stores were closed. They ordered milk and noticed it was “a little jacked up in terms of price,” but said they paid the premium “for that convenience.”
DoorDash charges a delivery fee, as well as a 10 to 15 per cent service charge, for groceries delivered to your door. Pickup orders don’t carry additional fees, however.
In a statement to TorontoToday, a DoorDash spokesperson said the company is “proud to provide a variety of ways for customers to experience our selection, whether that’s ordering fresh produce for pickup after work directly from our storefront or enjoying late night delivery to their doorstep when other store formats may be closed.”
“We look forward to serving the community for years to come,” DoorDash added.
Since opening in December 2022, the spokesperson said the DoorDash grocery store has fulfilled thousands of orders.
The demand for grocery delivery “went through the roof” at the height of the pandemic, according to Toronto retail analyst Bruce Winder.
“Some people got used to the convenience of grocery shopping online and they stuck with it even after the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in a statement to the Consumers Council of Canada. “It’s one of those services that makes life easier.”
Despite the return of in-person grocery shopping, the e-commerce grocery sector is still growing, he said.
A 2023 survey by market research firm Mintel found about 30 per cent of Canadians buy some of their groceries online and about four per cent do most of their shopping this way.
