New York City delivery workers have pocketed more than $104 million in tips since a January law forced apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash to stop hiding the tipping prompt, city officials said at a Battery Park press conference on Wednesday.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Department of Consumer and Worker Protection Commissioner Sam Levine, City Council leaders and an organizer with Los Deliveristas Unidos announced the figure and tied it directly to the rule change. Before the law, tips had cratered to a low of 93 cents per delivery, according to the officials. The city now projects the change will put roughly $180 million in additional earnings in workers’ pockets by the end of the year.
Apps had buried or delayed the tipping prompt, the screen where you decide how much extra to hand the person biking your dinner across the city, so that many customers never saw it at the moment they paid. The rule required the apps to surface that prompt up front, before the order is placed, rather than tucking it away where it was easy to skip. Make the ask visible, and people tip. That is the city’s read on the $104 million.
The announcement lands as the city keeps leaning on the delivery app industry. Earlier this year New York filed for a federal injunction to shut down the delivery app Motoclick after its own reports showed workers paid as little as $3.67 an hour. The tipping-prompt law runs through the same agency, DCWP, that regulates what the apps show customers and what they pay workers.
The 93-cents-per-delivery low, the $104 million already earned and the $180 million projected all come from the officials at the Battery Park event.
Featured image: NYC Mayor's Office
