DoorDash aggregator (MENU Link) - Onboarding Guide

Context

This article aims to explain how to onboard your Stores when you're integrating DoorDash as an aggregator.

Integration Overview

Online Ordering

The integration between MENU and DoorDash normally includes synchronizing the restaurant's menu, pricing, and availability with the DoorDash platform. This ensures that Customers browsing DoorDash can see the accurate Menu options and place Orders seamlessly.
When a Customer places an Order through DoorDash, the integration allows MENU to receive the Order (with all details) and integrate that information into the restaurant's POS. This ensures that DoorDash Orders are incorporated into the restaurant's existing workflow, alongside Orders from other Channels.

Inventory and Menu Sync

The integration facilitates real-time synchronization of the Items, pricing, and inventory availability between MENU and DoorDash. When a restaurant updates its Menu or inventory in the MENU system, these changes are shown automatically on the DoorDash platform. This helps prevent discrepancies and ensures that Customers can only order items that are currently available.

Reporting and Analytics

Integration with MENU enables the aggregation of Order and sales data from DoorDash along with other Channels. This allows restaurants to have comprehensive reporting and analytics, gaining insights into their overall business performance, Customer preferences, and ordering patterns across different platforms.

Setup Guide

Let's dive in into a step-by-step on how to get started using DoorDash as your aggregator. Here is your starting point: the Unified Login page, where you should select Management Center.

Adding DoorDash

First, if there is no DoorDash External Channel under Brand level, add it:

Please note: it will also have to be added on Store level.

Authentication - Sign-up

Once this is done, you have to make sure you're logged in on the Brand level.
If you try to log in with different level role, it won’t be possible to see the list of available Stores.

Now, you'll see the list of Stores here:

Select a Store

Choose the Store you'd like to enable DoorDash in.

Please mind: in order to onboard multiple locations, you need to contact our Onboarding team. They will help you onboard multiple locations..

Please note: by DoorDash requirements, all Stores for that account has to be shown, even those that aren't eligible for onboarding. Stores that are not eligible for onboarding are shown in grey and cannot be selected (in this case test store 5).

• Select the desired store and click SUBMIT
• Wait for a few minutes for the status to be changed. When you see status Menu Qualified, it means everything is okay, and you’ll have a menu preview link where you can check the menu
• If you got status Menu Block, it means something is wrong with the menu - check Order Types, Delivery and Store hours, visibility, availability, etc
• If the status says Abandoned, you need to contact DoorDash to resolve the issue
• After fixing menu blocks and abandoned status, go to Management Centre and disable/enable a subcategory of the menu that should be synced to Doordash. Once this is completed, go back to the External Channel page of the venue in the CMS and the status should say MENU_QUALIFIED

Common Issues

No Stores to Select

If there are no Stores available for selection, it is possible you'll also see a token error. That means you're not logged in at all, with any credentials.

Solution: you need to move to Brand level and log in with Business Admin role credentials.

No Business Admin permissions

Like mentioned, if you're using credentials for non business admin role, it won’t be possible to see the list of available Stores.

Solution: you need to move to Brand level and log in with Business Admin role credentials.

After user log in with credentials for business admin role, list of stores will be available.

Not eligible to onboard

Also, please remember what we mention above: if a Store is marked as not eligible to onboard, it will still be visible on the list of all Stores, but it will be marked as grey and impossible to select, as required by DoorDash.

Menu Management

Menu should be set up on these two links:

CMS App:

• The Brand and Venue (Store) should be created here
• Order Types and Areas set up
• Opening and delivery hours added
• Connection to doordash channel established

Also this is the place where onboarding process should be triggered.

Management Center:

All things regarding menu - creating/editing/deleting entities and items should happen here.

Once the store is selected, DoorDash automatically tries to integrate the Menu. After this happens, the status will show as Menu Qualified and you'll get the preview link for that Menu in an adequate tab. After 24 hours and after 5am, the status will be changed to Integration Activated:

When clicking on the Menu preview link, you can see the menu for a specific Store.
All changes in the Menu can be done either on the Brand level or Stores level (depend on how wide that change span is):

Onboarding status updates

Statuses are changed regularly as soon as onboarding process starts:

The statuses are:

• Menu_requested - Onboarding process started, menu creation webhook has been sent, the menu is being checked, in a few minutes status should be changed to one of the other options
  
  
• Menu_block - Menu ingestion failed or Menu validation unsuccessful on DoorDash because there is some issue with the menu (check order types, delivery and venue hours, visibility, availability etc). Menu needs to be checked, fixed and then the onboarding process needs to be triggered again
  
  
• Menu_qualified - Menu has passed auto QA and the POS onboarding is ready to be activated. This means everything is okay with menu, and the menu preview link should appear in the preview tab. In this link menu can be checked before activation of integration. Once you get this status, nothing else should be done, only wait adequate time for status to be changed to the following
  
  
• Integration_activated - After the menu is successfully ingested, and after 24 hours and after 5am status is going to be changed from Menu Qualified to Integration Activated
  
  
• Activation_block - An unexpected or unknown POS activation attempt failure. This is the expected status when an attempt to activate the POS order protocol failed
  
  
• Abandoned - This is the expected status when an onboarding cannot be processed either due to validation failure or internal error. If you get this status, you need to contact DoorDash to resolve the issue.

If you need help...

... you can always read up more in our Knowledge Base or raise a support ticket here - our support ninjas are here to help!

Also, please remember: to signup and start the setup correctly, you must first login here and then go through the following: your Brand → Configuration → Store Group.