One of the biggest tech-commerce platforms for food delivery just released data suggesting that Sacramento’s dining hubs have proved unusually buoyant against growing fiscal headwinds, as well as more committed to keeping prices from rising on their customers.
Those findings were recently shared by DoorDash.
Economists, policy-makers and business leaders have long been interested in the company’s data capabilities, since its army of ‘dashers’ are constantly engaged with scores of different food businesses around the U.S.
DoorDash’s November report was the first of its kind, emphasizing trend lines that it is seeing across consumer behavior and the broader culinary landscape.
Representatives for the company said that the data offers “a unique look at how local economies, including Sacramento, are performing in 100 U.S. cities based on millions of transactions across restaurants, groceries and retail.”
Questions about the statewide economy have been on the rise all year. Tariff whiplash and fears of an “A.I. bubble” have especially muddied the waters, while Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research observes that Californians are highly concerned about inflation and job availability.
Despite that, days before DoorDash released its positive data for Sacramento, Governor Gavin Newsom appeared at the California Economic Summit in Stockton to argue that the Golden State remains well-positioned to weather the ongoing storms.
“The fact that we’re currently experiencing one of the largest tax increases in American history with tariff rates that are higher than they’ve been since the 1930s – and we’re a state that is disproportionately impacted by these errant policies … this is code red from an economic perspective,” Newsom told the audience. “I can assure you there’s a lot of anxiety out there across this state … [but] I’d remind you that we have no peers in A.I. and we dominate in this space; we dominate in fusion; we dominate in quantum; we dominate in robotics; we dominate in space; we dominate in next-gen technologies like nuclear; we dominate in agriculture; we dominate as the number one factory state in the United States of American; in every critical category, California has no peers.”
While those words are cold comfort to some, the DoorDash economic report was still a qualified bright spot for the Capital City. One finding involved its “Cheeseburger Index,” which measures how much a cheeseburger, fries and a drink costs on average for a local to purchase: DoorDash found that Sacramento is below the national average, with that typical meal combo ringing up at $16.76, as opposed to the national average of $18.58.
When it comes to Sacramento’s business grown in the restaurant sector, DoorDash noted that the city also scored high, with the number of food operations joining its platform in the last year up by 12.7%.
However, the report’s most-promising number for the City of Trees came in the form of its “Resilience Rate,” which references how many food businesses DoorDash works with in a given city that remained opened in September of 2025, compared to September of 2024.
For Sacramento, that number was nearly 93%.
DoorDash’s report can’t paint a wholistic picture of Sacramento’s restaurant health because a number of the city’s dining spots aren’t currently working with the app. The platform’s model is not necessarily appealing to every type of culinary endeavor. Nevertheless, the legion of ‘dashers’ is rapidly growing. In 2019, the number of individuals who’d tried delivering for the platform to make money was fewer than 1 in 200 across the nation. Five years later, DoorDash says that number has risen to 1 in 15.
Thadddeus Johnson, owner of Streets Pub and Grub in Midtown, has been working with DoorDash for six years now. While Johnson’s business is mostly known for its lively neighborhood vibe and late-night events – happy hour football deals, Kings watch parties, Tuesday open mic comedy, Friday karaoke and Sunday trivia – it has also been gaining a reputation for having some of the best fish and chips in the central city. That particular order, along with the pub’s burgers, wings and mac and cheese, have made it a good fit for DoorDash action.
“We get a lot of food orders through DoorDash,” Johnson said. “They take 30%, and that’s kind of high. But on the other hand, it creates more of a promotional situation where the people who aren’t going out are seeing DoorDash and realizing that we have great fish and chips … Some people still don’t know we have food, which is very frustrating, but we kind of combat that with DoorDash … In a way, they’re marketing us. I’ve been with them for a while and it’s worked. They’ve never dropped the ball on us.”
When it comes to DoorDash’s recent finding that Sacramento restaurants are keeping menu prices below the national average, Johnson thinks that’s probably entirely attributable to hard choices that he and his fellow owners have been making over the last 12 months.
“Food cost has gone up a lot this year,” he stressed, “but we just haven’t passed it on to the customers.”
