DoorDash Free DashPass Year for Students

The Food Delivery Gold Standard

The food delivery industry is as competitive as the students at a country's best schools. It’s a race to be the last service standing as the market consolidates — and DoorDash is clearly here to play kingmaker. The brand is positioning the DashPass yearly subscription as a budget-friendly "Priceline" for the masses, a discount club of the stars. The stakes are incredibly high, as on-screen overlaid messaging screens bluntly describe the deal: a full year of DashPass for students. The way students are presented is telling with these promotions. The mere sight of students is enough to remind us that a campus is a brand’s bread and butter. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Students are the future of spending power and are more likely to try apps and delivery than most demographics.

The DashPass Offering: Is It Worth The Promo?

Why would DoorDash offer a full free year of DashPass to students? On the surface, it’s a simple answer: to draw in students now in the hopes they’ll stick with the service and use it well into their adult lives. The gates to the promo are made of iron. The whole campaign is about the value proposition of DashPass in the student demographic. But there’s a deep psychological underpinning which can't be ignored. Food delivery apps make their money through high delivery charges or a subscription fee. The subsidies to get DashPass in the hands of students during the holiday season is about hooking them and building a monetary habit.

The Flat Pricing Model

It’s clear that DoorDash is trying to use the free year of DashPass to hook students into a paid subscription service that normally costs $9.99 a month. This is the same playbook that Amazon Prime, Spotify, and most other subscription services have used. This isn’t just about selling a service — it’s about turning users into lifelong customers with the incentives to keep using the service. The cost of delivery is expected to exceed the subscription price itself. So that money is already being saved with the free DashPass. The promotional strategy is to give students a taste of what things could be like if they signed up for DoorDash every month. DoorDash is trying to make sure that the system's implementation is straightforward and hassle-free. The hitch is that without the deal, students may not realize the value of the DashPass that they’re getting for free. However, there’s another layer to this deal that DoorDash is using to entice potential customers. During the holiday season, when spending is at an all-time high, DoorDash is trying to make sure that their customers have more money to spend on other things. By giving away DashPass for free, DoorDash is hoping that students will use it to order food from their favorite restaurants and not have to worry about the delivery fee, so that students will have more money to spend on other things.