Take accountability

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STORY
How DoorDash recovered from a delivery disaster

You’ve probably heard of DoorDash, the food delivery giant that changed the way millions get their meals.

But did you know its co-founder once personally refunded orders and baked cookies for customers after a system crash, just to win back their trust?

It was 2013 in Palo Alto, California and Tony Xu was running a tiny startup with a handful of local restaurant partners.

Then came the nearby Stanford football game. “Everybody in Palo Alto decided to order DoorDash for restaurant delivery.” The sudden surge was more than the fledgling service could handle. Orders stacked up, deliveries ran an hour and a half late, and the experience was, in Xu’s own words, “terrible.”

“We thought the right thing to do would be to refund everybody,” Xu recalled. But they didn’t stop there. “We ended up staying up that night and baking cookies so that we could deliver them at around 5:00 AM.”

Xu could have blamed “technical issues” and moved on. Instead, he took ownership—personally processing refunds for every affected order, even though it reportedly cost about 40% of their then-meager cash reserves—while sending direct apologies and delivering boxes of fresh-baked cookies.

It wasn’t about the money or the cookies. It was about sending a message: “We care about making this right.” 

​​That moment didn't just mend trust—it helped build the customer-first culture that powered DoorDash’s rapid rise. Today, DoorDash dominates the U.S. food delivery market with approximately 67% market share, and by the end of 2024 held about 60.7% share, far ahead of Uber Eats and Grubhub.

UNSPOKEN RULE
Take accountability

Mistakes can feel devastating in the moment—especially if you’re new, struggling with imposter syndrome, and/or working with someone you care to impress. 

What DoorDash’s story taught me, though, is that, when something goes wrong, people will remember how you handled it far more than the error itself.

Psychologists even have a term for this: the “service recovery paradox”—or the idea that a mistake, when handled well, can actually increase customer satisfaction beyond what it would have been had nothing gone wrong.

How can you turn a mistake into a reputation-building opportunity?

• If you mess up: Instead of saying, “Oops, sorry!” try saying, “Here’s what happened, here’s what I’m doing to fix it, here’s what I’ve already done or propose doing to make things right, and here’s how I’ll prevent it from happening again.”

• If you’re at risk of messing up: Instead of saying “Sorry this took longer than I thought” after the fact, try saying, “I anticipate this slow-moving train wreck and propose that we do this to soften the impact.”
  

• While you’re at it: Make fixing the issue feel effortless for the other person—even if it means more work for you.

In a perfect world, mistakes wouldn’t happen at all. But we don’t live in a perfect world. So, it’s important to understand the unspoken rule of making mistakes as I explain in The Unspoken Rules, chapter 9 (“Manage Your Workload”), page 135 (Amazon link here / other purchase options here):

1. No mistakes are better than mistakes.

2. Safe mistakes are better than dangerous mistakes.

3. Small mistakes are better than big mistakes.

4. Private mistakes are better than public mistakes.

5. First-time mistakes are better than non-first-time mistakes.

Mistakes can still happen, of course—no matter how careful you are. What matters most in those situations is that you respond in a way that leaves people thinking, Wow, what a great attitude! Forget about what happened. I want to work with you again!

See you next Tuesday for our next story and unspoken rule,

—Gorick

What’s an “unspoken rule”? They’re the things that separate those who get ahead from those who stumble—and don’t know why. You can learn more about these rules in the workplace in my Wall Street Journal bestselling book called—you guessed it—The Unspoken Rules.

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Sources

1. “Everybody in Palo Alto decided to order DoorDash for restaurant delivery.”

2. “We thought the right thing to do would be to refund everybody”

3. it reportedly cost about 40% of their then-meager cash reserves

4. Cover image

5. DoorDash CEO, Tony Xu. 

6. food delivery market with approximately 67% market share

7. held about 60.7% share, far ahead of Uber Eats and Grubhub.