Here’s what 5 CEOs learned by becoming undercover bosses

Tony Xu, CEO of DoorDash, makes monthly food deliveries

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu makes monthly deliveries as part of WeDash, a program begun in 2015 that requires salaried employees to carry out several deliveries a year.

Xu told “The Rideshare Guy” podcast last year that it had sparked ideas for improvement. He said the company had a Slack channel dedicated to issues people identify from WeDash, such as app bugs or getting the wait times for deliveries wrong.

Xu also said it helped him and his employees solve problems, in an interview on Stanford Graduate School of Business’s “View From The Top” podcast in 2021.

“If you’re at the surface level, you’re never going to actually realize what the problems are,” he said.

On the podcast, he also shared that he does customer service for the company daily, which he said can sometimes shed more light on areas for improvement than data.

“Sometimes, it’s really hard just looking at the data to get to the digging,” he said.

During a ride covered by The Associated Press, the company’s CTO and Xu’s cofounder, Andy Fang got lost during one WeDash delivery after the app prompted him to go to the wrong address.