DoorDash Merchant Status vs. Uber Eats Success Score: What Restaurants Need to Know in 2026

Your menu hasn’t changed, and neither have your hours nor your prices. The food is as good as ever, and your reviews look fine. But delivery orders are slipping.

Demand can drop for many reasons, from a new competitor nearby to a slow season. One place operators often forget to look is the performance dashboard. DoorDash rates every store with DoorDash Merchant Status, and Uber Eats uses the Success Score. Both measure how reliably you fulfill orders, and both affect eligibility for badges and extra visibility. Here’s what each program measures, where to find your score, and what you can fix this week.

What Are DoorDash Merchant Status and Uber Eats Success Score?

DoorDash Merchant Status is DoorDash’s monthly performance rating for each store. It launched on May 1, 2026, under the Road to Most Loved framework, replacing both Optiscore and the old pass-or-fail Most Loved badge. Stores land in one of four levels: Poor, Needs Work, Almost There, or Most Loved. Only Most Loved is visible to customers.

The Uber Eats Success Score is Uber’s monthly rating for each store, with five tiers: Poor, Fair, Good, Great, and Excellent. Per Uber’s Success Score FAQ, it draws on operational excellence, menu details, customer ratings, and sustainable packaging where applicable. Ratings count on Uber Eats but aren’t one of DoorDash’s signals.

Both programs show where your operation needs attention, and both decide eligibility for certain platform benefits.

Factor	DoorDash	Uber Eats
Program name	Merchant Status (Road to Most Loved)	Success Score
Number of levels	Four	Five
Key factors	Missing/incorrect items, cancellations, photo coverage, menu markup	Operational excellence, menu details, ratings, packaging where applicable
Menu markup scored?	Yes	No, removed December 1, 2025
Update frequency	Monthly, based on the prior month	Monthly, on the first of the month
Customer-facing recognition	Most Loved badge only	Top Eats badge at Great or above
Where to check	Merchant Portal	Uber Eats Manager

What Actually Affects Your Delivery App Performance Scores?

The platforms measure different things, so read each on its own terms.

Missing or incorrect items. A customer orders three burgers, two fries, and three drinks. One drink gets left behind during the dinner rush. Both platforms track orders reported with missing or wrong items, so that drink now counts against your accuracy record. The fix: one person checks every bag against the ticket before sealing it. 

Cancellations and unfulfilled orders. A sold-out special stays live, someone orders it, and you cancel. DoorDash counts cancellations broadly, including those caused by outdated hours or out-of-stock items left on the menu, and even customer cancellations. Uber Eats counts rejected, canceled, and unaccepted orders as unfulfilled. Mark items out of stock the moment they run out. 

Incomplete menus. DoorDash scores photo coverage, the share of items with images. Uber Eats scores menu details, the share of items with photos or descriptions. Start with your best sellers, and see why menu management is a core POS feature for keeping menus accurate across channels. 

Preparation delays. Accept more orders than the kitchen can handle, and couriers end up waiting at the counter. Uber Eats counts orders that aren’t ready by the estimated handoff time, excluding courier-caused delays. DoorDash reports wait times in its portal, but they aren’t a status signal. 

Pricing differences. DoorDash scores menu markup against in-store prices but doesn’t require exact price matching. Uber Eats removed menu markup from its Success Score on December 1, 2025, though some older Uber pages still list it. Pricing still shapes your margins and checkout conversion on both apps. 

Where Can You Check Your Restaurant’s Scores?

DoorDash

1. Log in to the DoorDash Merchant Portal.
2. Go to Insights > Most Loved.
3. Review your status, how each signal is tracking, and the recommended next step.
4. For details, open Insights > Operations Quality for cancellations and missing items, or Insights > Pricing for markup.

The portal shows the goal for your next level, not necessarily the full Most Loved benchmark, and each location is evaluated separately. 

Uber Eats

1. Log in to Uber Eats Manager.
2. Click Performance > Success Score, or the Success Score widget on the homepage. uber
3. Review each store’s tier and how it performed in each scored area.
4. Check the Recommendations and Benefits sections.

A score only appears once a store is eligible for the program (see the FAQ below).

Check the metric that needs attention before spending money on promotions or advertising.

A 15-Minute Delivery App Performance Audit for Restaurant Owners

Sit down with your manager during a quiet hour and open both dashboards side by side.

Minutes 0 to 3: Check your status. Write down your DoorDash level, your Uber Eats tier, and the weakest metric on each. If you run several locations, check each store separately.

Minutes 3 to 6: Find the repeat problem. Scan recent missing-item reports, wrong orders, cancellations, and late handoffs. Look for a pattern, such as drinks going missing on weekends or cancellations tied to one item.

Minutes 6 to 10: Compare your top sellers. Pull up your five best-selling items on each app. Check availability, photos, descriptions, required modifiers, opening hours, and prices. Note anything outdated or inconsistent between platforms.

Minutes 10 to 13: Fix one preventable problem. Remove an item you no longer make, add photos to a top seller, tape a packing checklist to the expo station, or raise prep time for your busiest window.

Minutes 13 to 15: Set the follow-up. Give one person ownership of each dashboard. Record today’s numbers and schedule a review for the first week of next month.

Some fixes help on the very next order, but official scores only move with each platform’s monthly update.

Here’s a hypothetical example. A pizzeria stopped making garlic knots in the spring but never removed them from one delivery app. Every few days, someone orders them, and the shift lead cancels. Deleting the item ends those cancellations. A rule that the expo person checks drinks and sauces against each ticket targets the pizzeria’s most common missing-item complaint. Neither change costs anything.

Can Better Restaurant Technology Help Improve These Metrics?

Poor delivery performance isn’t always a marketing problem. Sometimes it comes from disconnected workflows: a tablet for every app, menus edited one platform at a time, and tickets lost on a busy line. Our guide to managing orders from multiple delivery apps covers this in depth.

Orders.co can’t change a platform’s score, but it can remove common causes of avoidable mistakes:

• Order consolidation brings DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and direct website orders into one system, so staff watch one screen instead of several tablets.
• Menu management syncs prices, modifiers, and sold-out items across connected channels from one place.
• Kitchen workflows route tickets to the right printer or KDS station. Staff can add prep time, set delivery apps to busy mode, or pause online ordering during a rush.
• Dispute management pulls disputed order details into one dashboard so you can respond to eligible chargebacks.

Will a Higher Performance Score Guarantee More Delivery Orders?

No. A higher tier can unlock recognition and visibility opportunities, such as DoorDash’s Most Loved carousel or Uber’s Top Eats badge. Neither platform promises more orders at any level, and DoorDash states that Merchant Status is not a separate ranking system. Road to Most Loved: DoorDash Merchant Status Guide +2

Demand still depends on local competition, menu appeal, pricing, hours, and what customers near you want. A strong score reflects operational reliability, which protects the customers you already have. Growing demand is a separate job. For that side, see our guide on how to get more orders on DoorDash.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I dispute my DoorDash Merchant Status?

Not the overall status. According to DoorDash’s Road to Most Loved FAQs, it can’t be manually changed. You can review and dispute specific order issues in the Merchant Portal, and contact DoorDash Support if the underlying data looks wrong. 

Do orders from my own website affect DoorDash Merchant Status?

Only marketplace and self-delivery orders count. Orders through DoorDash Drive, Storefront, In-Store, and Kiosk are excluded. 

Why can’t I see my Uber Eats Success Score?

A store receives a score only when the program is available in its country, and the location has completed more than 15 orders. New or low-volume stores may not see one yet. 

Start With One Fix This Week

You can’t control every factor behind delivery demand. You can control how accurately orders leave your kitchen, how current your menus are, and how reliably your team handles the rush. Open both dashboards this week, find the problem that keeps repeating, and fix it. If juggling tablets and menus is part of that problem, see how Orders.co puts every order channel in one workflow.