The news: DoorDash unveiled a host of features designed to make its services stickier for both businesses and customers.

The updates include:

• DashMart Fulfillment Services, which lets retailers harness the company’s network of dark stores—along with its inventory management, picking, packing, and delivery capabilities—to quickly get orders to customers’ doors.
• Going Out, a feature that helps customers make restaurant reservations and earn in-store rewards. DashPass members get extra perks, including access to exclusive tables and rewards, and discounted Lyft rides.
• Autonomous Delivery Platform, an AI-powered dispatcher that determines the best way—Dasher, robot, or drone—to get an order to a customer. The technology also powers DoorDash’s new small autonomous delivery robot, Dot, which can reach speeds of up to 20 mph and is designed to handle local delivery.

The company also launched a creator program, a partnership with Yelp, and AI-powered recommendations to make it easier for users to discover restaurants and encourage more frequent use of its platform.

The opportunity: DoorDash’s fulfillment updates position the platform as a stronger partner for the many retailers trying to keep pace with Amazon and Walmart on delivery speed.

• Rather than spending millions to build their own fast delivery infrastructure, retailers can rely on intermediary services like DoorDash and Instacart to do the work for them.
• Many already are: Kroger is making its DoorDash debut this month, while Ace Hardware, Dollar General, and Home Depot joined the company’s marketplace this year.
• With DashMart Fulfillment Services, companies can even expand to areas where they don’t have a physical footprint, so long as a DashMart is nearby. That’s certainly true for Party City, which no longer has brick-and-mortar stores but can still deliver orders to most metro areas through its DoorDash partnership.

While DoorDash—like Instacart—sees considerable room for growth, it also knows that rising demand will strain its fulfillment network. That’s where the robots come in: DoorDash expects autonomous delivery systems to eventually ease the burden on Dashers, enabling them to focus on more complex orders while ensuring consistent, speedy service.

Keeping up with the competition: DoorDash’s latest features show the pressures of competing with Uber and Instacart, both of which are adding more retailers to their platforms while courting customers with broader perks.

• DoorDash’s launch of restaurant reservations puts it on equal footing with Uber, which partnered with OpenTable in May to allow users to make in-app bookings.
• At the same time, its expanded partnership with Kroger covering delivery from nearly 2,700 stores deals a blow to Instacart’s position as the dominant third-party grocery delivery provider.