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Schedule deliveries for later

By default, deliveries you create are picked up and delivered as soon as possible (ASAP). If you want to enable your customers to order ahead for a later delivery time, you can use scheduled deliveries.

tip

Scheduled deliveries are generally best for when you're delivering perishable goods like food and drinks. If you're delivering non-perishable goods that don't need to be picked up or delivered at a specific time, delivery windows can help DoorDash more efficiently batch your deliveries together.

1. Prerequisites​

If you're new to Drive and haven't yet created your first delivery, you should start with one of our tutorials. The tutorials will walk you through getting the credentials you need to call the APIs and making some basic API calls.

2. Set up delivery quotes​

For scheduled deliveries, we recommend using delivery quotes; if you're not already using quotes, you should follow the quotes how-to guide before this one.

When you create a quote for a scheduled delivery, DoorDash's fulfillment systems will evaluate if we can meet the requested pickup or dropoff time and provide our estimated pickup and dropoff times in the response to your quote request. You can then validate whether these estimated times meet your requirements, either using logic built into your app or by showing the estimated times to the end customer.

3. Schedule a delivery​

To create a scheduled delivery, include either the pickup_time or dropoff_time field (but not both) in your quote request. Pickup_time or dropoff_time is required if you are allowing scheduled deliveries on your platform. You may also want to enable SMS notifications for the dropoff contact.

  • pickup_time: A Dasher will show up at this time, collect your order, and deliver it
  • dropoff_time: A Dasher will show up early enough to collect the order and get to the dropoff location by this time
  • dropoff_contact_send_notifications: When this is set to true, DoorDash will send SMS notifications to the dropoff_phone_number with updates on the status of the order and a link to the tracking page

The times are validated according to the following rules:

  • Each time must be formatted in ISO-8601 format using the "complete date plus hours, minutes, and seconds" format that looks like this: "2023-05-02T17:00:00Z"
{
    ... // other fields
    "pickup_time": "2023-05-02T17:00:00Z"
    // or
    "dropoff_time": "2023-05-02T17:00:00Z"
}

The response to your quote request will include a few estimated time fields that you can reference to see when DoorDash can fulfill the delivery.

  • estimated_pickup_time: When we expect the Dasher will arrive at the pickup location
  • estimated_dropoff_time: When we expect the Dasher will arrive the dropoff location

4. Set up webhooks​

When using scheduled deliveries, it's important to have set up webhooks so that you receive real-time notifications when a Dasher is assigned and on the way to pick up your delivery.

Next steps​