DoorDash is giving consumer brands a direct line of sight onto grocery and retail shelves. The company on Wednesday introduced Brand Center, a platform that combines purchase data with information collected by Dashers inside stores, so brands can track out-of-stocks, assortment gaps and what shoppers buy instead.

The platform expands DoorDash's advertising toolkit but moves beyond measuring ad performance. Brands can use it to identify stores where their products are unavailable, examine how shoppers respond to out-of-stocks and find gaps in online product listings across DoorDash's retail network.

"Brand Center is part of DoorDash's broader investment in local commerce, providing brands with insights that help strengthen performance for their business and retail partners," Fuad Hannon, vice president of New Verticals at DoorDash, said in a statement.

Hannon said the platform gives brands visibility into on-shelf availability, shopper substitutions, catalog content and advertising performance.

The potentially significant piece for grocery marketers is Inventory Insights. DoorDash said the feature combines consumer order information with more than 1 million in-store shelf signals that Dashers collect on an average day. Artificial intelligence analyzes the data to identify availability and out-of-stock trends. Brands can drill down to individual locations with problems and estimate the revenue they lose when products are unavailable.

The substitution numbers alone justify attention. According to DoorDash, nearly 12% of shoppers choose a competing brand or product when their intended item is unavailable, while more than 40% request a refund instead of accepting a substitute. Brand Center's Consumer Substitution Insights shows companies exactly which products and brands capture those redirected purchases.

Beyond availability, the platform addresses the digital shelf. Assortment Insights identifies missing product listings or incomplete information across retailers on DoorDash. A Catalog Editor lets eligible brands update product images, descriptions and categories — a fix for the kind of listing decay that suppresses conversion without the brand knowing.

DoorDash is also connecting the data to an in-store workforce. Through a feature called Merchandising Tasks, brands in eligible locations can deploy Dashers to conduct shelf audits, count products, restock merchandise and work on promotional displays. That turns DoorDash's courier base into an execution arm, not just a data source.

The initiative lands as DoorDash pushes further from restaurant delivery into grocery and retail. The company said its network now includes more than 200,000 retail and grocery stores and more than 9 million Dashers.

The financial stakes are large. DoorDash cited research estimating that inventory distortion, including out-of-stocks and overstocks, costs the global retail industry about $1.7 trillion annually.

Brand Center is available to DoorDash advertisers in the United States, though some features are limited to eligible advertisers. For CPG brands already buying on the platform, the tool effectively turns every Dasher trip into a shelf audit — and gives ad spend a measurable link to availability.