New York City’s first-in-the-nation minimum pay law for app-based delivery workers now covers a group it had long excluded: the couriers who deliver groceries. After the City Council overrode a mayoral veto in September 2025, workers for platforms such as Instacart and Shipt are entitled to the same minimum the city already guaranteed restaurant-delivery couriers — currently $21.44 an hour before tips.

The change closed what labor advocates called the “Instacart loophole,” a four-year gap that left grocery couriers outside protections their restaurant-delivering counterparts had won.

A loophole four years in the making

When the Council first set a minimum pay rate for app delivery workers in 2021, the law covered restaurant delivery and explicitly left out grocery and package couriers. As grocery delivery boomed, that carve-out left tens of thousands of workers — many of them immigrants — earning unregulated, sub-minimum pay on apps like Instacart and Shipt.

The Council moved to fix it in July 2025, passing a package of bills extending the minimum pay standard to grocery delivery and adding related protections, including a requirement that apps prompt for tips at order placement rather than after delivery, with suggested tips starting at 10 percent. Council Member Sandy Nurse, a sponsor, framed the economics bluntly: a business model that cannot survive while paying workers a minimum wage, she argued, is not a successful one.

Mayor Eric Adams vetoed two of the bills in August 2025 — even though his own administration had supported the underlying standard — delaying the safeguards. The Council overrode the veto, with reporting citing a 36-14 vote, putting the grocery protections into law.

What workers get

The covered rate is $21.44 per hour before tips, the figure in effect since April 1, 2025. That number reflects the law’s phase-in rate of $19.96 plus an inflation adjustment, and it rises each April: the rate is scheduled to climb to $22.13 on April 1, 2026. Grocery couriers are now entitled to that same floor.

Industry pushback was immediate. Instacart called the legislation “unconscionable” and warned it could raise grocery-delivery costs sharply. Estimates of how many workers the expansion reaches varied across the debate, from the tens of thousands into the broader universe of roughly 80,000-plus app delivery workers citywide.

Enforcement under a new administration

The political backdrop shifted in January 2026, when Zohran Mamdani took office as mayor. His Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), led by Commissioner Sam Levine, quickly moved to enforce the existing minimum pay rules: on January 30, 2026, the city announced that Uber Eats, HungryPanda and Fantuan owed roughly $4.6 million in back wages for failing to comply with the minimum pay law during earlier periods, plus civil fines.

The Uber Eats portion alone was about $3.15 million owed to 48,602 workers for violations between December 2023 and September 2024, with $350,000 in additional fines, according to the city. One HungryPanda courier, the city said, had been denied about $13,000 after averaging 43 hours a week at $7.84 an hour. “The era of giant corporations juicing profits by underpaying workers is over,” Levine said in announcing the settlements.

For grocery couriers, the combination — a newly extended minimum and a city administration signaling aggressive enforcement — marked the biggest shift in the economics of app delivery work since the original 2021 law.

Verification

Frequently Asked Questions

What is NYC's current minimum pay rate for app delivery workers?
At least $21.44 per hour before tips, in effect since April 1, 2025. It is scheduled to rise to $22.13 on April 1, 2026.
Who is newly covered by the law?
App-based grocery-delivery couriers — workers for platforms such as Instacart and Shipt — who had been excluded when the 2021 law covered only restaurant delivery.
How did the grocery expansion become law?
The City Council passed the bills in July 2025; Mayor Eric Adams vetoed two of them in August 2025; the Council overrode the veto in September 2025.
What happened with the back-pay settlements?
In January 2026, Mayor Mamdani and DCWP announced that Uber Eats, HungryPanda and Fantuan owed about $4.6 million in back wages for earlier minimum-pay violations, plus civil fines.