Delivery apps depend on a tiny group of power users

Delivery apps lean on frequent users

DoorDash and Uber Eats generate most revenue from a small group of consumers in their mid-forties or younger who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars yearly on food delivery.

The data comes from the Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, conducted every three years with five thousand households, collected its latest data in twenty twenty-five and released it in October.

Most people don't use delivery apps

For the eight bottom spending percentiles, the median consumer spent zero dollars on food delivery, suggesting many survey respondents have never used food delivery apps at all.

Top spenders use them heavily

The median consumer under thirty-five in the top ten percent of spenders spent eighteen hundred dollars a year on food delivery. For those between thirty-five and forty-four, the figure was twenty-four hundred dollars a year.

Why delivery apps stay strong

Jeremy Horpedahl, an associate professor of economics at the University of Central Arkansas, said a small group spending heavily could explain why delivery services post strong earnings while retailers warn about consumer pullback.

“It could be true that ninety-five percent of people are pulling back. But if this group is still spending, that's why Uber Eats could be saying yes, we're still seeing strong revenue.”

DoorDash expands beyond food

DoorDash has added more grocers and other retailers to its platform and is growing its paid DashPass membership to retain frequent users, a company spokesperson said.

Winning over rivals' power users matters most

Horpedahl said grabbing superusers from competitors could prove particularly lucrative. Even converting one percent of those frequent spenders would be huge for a rival service.

“If you get just one percent of those going to the other company, that would be huge.”