American consumers have been forced to eat food-delivery costs sometimes nearly as big as the meals themselves. Regulators are fed up.
In addition to new laws boosting compensation and benefits for delivery drivers, restaurant protections such as pandemic-related commission caps have been proliferating at the city and state levels. Consumer protections could be next.
New laws have been costly for delivery players that have been struggling to generate consistent profits lately. On its third-quarter conference call, Uber , which owns and operates Uber Eats, suggested it wouldn’t absorb all of the added costs related to the passage of Proposition 22 in California. Instead, Chief Financial Officer Nelson Chai said he expected additional wage or benefit costs to be passed along to customers. DoorDash and Grubhub say they are doing the same.
When the state’s voters opted to keep drivers classified as independent contractors, they didn’t necessarily realize they would be