DoorDash expands Valentine’s gifts beyond flowers with same-day delivery

DoorDash has figured out the biggest Valentine’s Day trick of all: making a last-minute gift look considered. More than 80% of flower orders during Valentine’s week in 2025 were placed on the holiday itself, and DoorDash said Valentine’s Day 2025 was its biggest New Verticals delivery day ever in the United States, with more than 1 million orders and more than 350,000 bouquets delivered nationwide.

The real shift is that flowers are no longer the whole story. DoorDash says its retail assortment now stretches into beauty, home goods, sporting goods, electronics and outdoor supply stores, with same-day delivery in as fast as one hour. On the retail side, the smartest combinations are the ones that feel personal without looking improvised: roses with a Sephora beauty buy, a bouquet paired with something from Victoria’s Secret, or flowers plus a useful Target add-on that says you actually thought beyond the default dozen.

That breadth matters because Valentine’s shoppers are already buying like procrastinators. DoorDash said grocery and retail sales grew by more than 50% on Valentine’s Day 2025, and more than half of all orders included holiday essentials such as flowers, chocolates and fragrances. The company also said more than 20,000 make-up flower orders were placed the day after Valentine’s Day, which is the kind of number that tells you how many people are using delivery as a reset button.

The restaurant side has its own logic. DoorDash’s “Most Loved” Valentine’s list drew from restaurants that had kept consecutive Most Loved status over the last six months and racked up more than 50 mentions of the word “love” in customer reviews. That makes the edit feel less random than a generic food roundup, especially on a Friday, which DoorDash called the most popular day of the week to order food for delivery in 2025. Pairing flowers with dessert or dinner from a name that already has customer affection behind it is a cleaner move than sending another forgettable convenience box.

DoorDash has also made the timing easier to control. Shoppers can schedule flower orders in advance or use same-day delivery in as little as 35 minutes. By Valentine’s Day weekend 2026, more than one-third of online flower delivery orders were being placed on DoorDash, a sign that the app has become a serious one-stop seasonal marketplace, not just a place to rescue a forgotten bouquet.