This ‘nostalgic' DoorDash ad targeting Latino consumers misses the mark

Los Angeles Times

09-05-2025

On Tuesday, during halftime of the second leg semifinal UEFA Champions League match between Barcelona and Inter Milan, I was served an ad that brought me down from my soccer-induced euphoria.
In it, we see three Latino families driving or riding past a restaurant. The parents are either young Gen Xers or millennials, while their kids very clearly belong to Gen Alpha.
'Can we stop for food?' the younglings ask.
'No, hay comida en la casa,' the parents respond. There's food at home.
When they finally make it to their respective houses, the ad reveals, la comida en la casa turns out to be the very food they craved from the restaurants they passed by. Much to the children's pleasant surprise, it was delivered by a DoorDash driver.
The commercial is by no means new. The food delivery app company launched this campaign specifically targeting Latino consumers last November. Nor is it the first time I've watched the spot. It airs a lot during soccer matches. Go figure.
But every time it comes on my screen, my buttons are pushed. It claims an even bigger, rent-free space in my head with each subsequent airing. This week was the final straw. I got so mad, I had to write about it.
According to AdWeek, the commercial is intended to evoke wistfulness from millennial and Gen Z Latinos. It's a smart business move — just look at how willing we are to buy concert tickets for legacy acts like Los Bukis or RBD. Heck, Selena Quintanilla has been dead for 30 years but her family's ability to use her name to sell us everything from makeup to Funko Pop figurines to a creepy, AI-assisted record remains undefeated. There's plenty of money to be made from the nostalgia economy.
(In our defense, Latinos aren't the only ones susceptible to this phenomenon. Here's looking at you, When We Were Young festival attendees, or anyone else drawing their fashion inspiration from Y2K — which, lol.)
'No, hay comida en la casa' certainly checks that box. For many children of immigrants, these words ring familiar because it was our working-class parents' go-to response whenever our bratty and spoiled selves asked if we could dine out, not knowing nor caring that doing so cost money. To them, this was an unnecessary and frivolous expense because there's perfectly fine food at home!
The phrase reached peak ubiquity on the internet in the 2010s thanks to media companies and meme social media accounts focusing on English-speaking Latino audiences. I should know: I used to work for one of them and saw firsthand how well it played, so much so that we commissioned a comic strip on it for De Los. Over the last decade and a half, 'hay comida en la casa' has become such a totem for Latinidad expressed online that it should have its own entry on the meme encyclopedia site Know Your Meme (it doesn't). If you do a search of the phrase on Etsy, you'll get hundreds of products bearing the words — from aprons to T-shirts to tote bags to artwork for your kitchen.
But DoorDash's usage of 'hay comida en la casa' isn't it. This campaign is completely antithetical to the phrase's original intent. The nostalgia of the saying lies in the home-cooked meals our cash-strapped parents would make for us, not on the restaurant food we didn't get to eat. It's what makes us yearn for a rosy version of the past that might not have actually existed.
There's nothing sentimental about paying for the convenience of having food delivered by someone who's probably working this gig just to make ends meet (please tip your delivery drivers well!). This ad doesn't put me in touch with my ethnic and cultural identity. It doesn't make me feel seen. If anything, it makes me feel like a mark, like someone who can be separated from their dollars through tokenistic fan service. It's as if these corporations saw all those stories about the collective purchasing power of Latinos, and arrived at the conclusion that the best way to get a piece of our pie was by going after the lowest common denominator.
But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps I and the handful of YouTube commenters irked by this commercial are in the minority. It could very well be that this ad is hitting all of its target metrics and the company has improved its profit margins because of it. I might just be nothing more than an aging millennial slipping dangerously close to 'Old Man Yells at Cloud' territory.
And if that's the case, perhaps the food delivery app company should co-opt another popular Latino internet meme for their next marketing push. I've even done them the favor and come up with their next tagline — 'DoorDash: delivery that's faster than a flyin' chancla!'
I bet people would love that.
On Thursday, the College of Cardinals selected Robert Prevost, 69, to be the next leader of the Catholic Church. The Chicago-born priest, who took on the name Pope Leo XIV because of his commitment to the poor and the working class, is the first pontiff from the United States and only the second from the Americas— his predecessor, Pope Francis, who died on April 21, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Pope Leo XIV, a member of the Order of St. Augustine, has deep ties to Peru. He spent two decades doing missionary work in the country and became a naturalized citizen in 2015 before his appointment as bishop of Chiclayo, one of Peru's largest cities.
'Greetings ... to all of you, and in particular, to my beloved diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, where a faithful people have accompanied their bishop, shared their faith,' Pope Leo XIV said in Spanish during his inaugural address from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica.
And for those wondering whether Pope Leo XIV is a Cubs or White Sox fan, his brother, John Prevost, confirmed that the new pontiff is a proud South Sider.
'Whoever said Cubs on the radio got it wrong. It's Sox,' he told NBC Chicago.
Congratulations to my colleague Gustavo Arellano, who was named a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist in the commentary category. According to the judging panel, Gustavo was recognized 'for vivid columns reported from across the Southwest that shattered stereotypes and probed complex shifts in politics in an election year when Latinos were pivotal voters.'
Regular readers of this newsletter are no doubt familiar with his work, which is featured in this space regularly. But what you might not know about Gustavo is that he's also generous with his time, someone who's willing to mentor the next generation of Latino journalists. He has volunteered to edit several De Los stories, offering his wealth of knowledge to interns and freelance writers alike.
Felicidades, Gustavo! This is you now.
And a special shout-out to friend of the newsletter Marcela García, who was part of the Boston Globe team that was named a finalist for Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing.
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The San Bernardino-based quintet performed 'Peliculeando,' a track off of '111Xpantia,' their 9th studio album released last week. You can watch it here. (Also, Jimmy Kimmel, if you're reading this, the band's name is not pronounced 'Fuerza Reh-gee-da.' All you have to do is listen to any of their tracks for a phonetic breakdown of how to properly say it.)
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