An affiliate of DoorDash Inc. (NYSE: DASH) plans to expand the footprint of its DashMart delivery service into a new location in Northern Virginia in response to a surging demand for online ordering.
The San Francisco company asked Loudoun County earlier this week for a zoning determination to establish whether it can use industrial space to store items ordered online at a site at 405 Glenn Drive in Sterling, according to the submission. It would be at least the third location in Greater Washington for DashMart, which also plans locations in Alexandria and Capitol Hill.
DashMart buys goods wholesale from distributors including Coca-Cola Bottling Co. and Unilever PLC to store onsite until they are either picked up by customers or independent contractors, or "Dashers" dispatched to deliver those items to their destinations, per Sofia Farrara, senior manager of new business verticals for DoorDash, in a letter sent Monday to Hilary Richardson, a planner in Loudoun's zoning and planning department.
Representatives for DoorDash declined to comment.
The Glenn Drive site is in the 34-acre Sterling Park, a seven-building office-and-warehouse campus located off Sterling Boulevard east of Route 28. It's in a part of Northern Virginia where other e-commerce companies including Amazon.com Inc. have established distribution hubs. That could prove to be an advantage for DoorDash over more urban sites like the former Frager's Hardware space in Capitol Hill, which has encountered resistance from area residents concerned about the impact of such a use on the surrounding area.
