Since the beginning of the year, DoorDash has quietly been testing its own virtual brand called Plentiful, a “healthyish” take on bowls and salads. The concept is cooked out of two of its DoorDash Kitchens locations in San Jose, CA and Brooklyn, NY plus 13 other host kitchen partners across eight nationwide states. Most partners are top-ranking DoorDash merchants with a high volume of reviews. A handful of other non-traditional partners include CloudKitchens tenants like Bahn Mi Oven in Austin, TX as well as a meal prep service called Aesthetic Meal in Tulsa, OK. Last summer, the platform spun up its own brand licensing division, matching brick and mortar brands like Milk Bar, Bird-N-Bun, and Aria Korean Street Food with other merchants looking to generate incremental sales as a “host kitchen,” fulfilling orders as a licensee. DoorDash now works with nearly 50 of such kitchens. The move into virtual brands, both licensed and owned-and-operated, signals a desire for the platform to vertically integrate in order to generate higher take rates, as it has quietly done with its first-party DashMart convenience stores.