New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is touting a delivery-app tipping law as his own achievement, but the legislation passed before he took office, and critics say the policy will only drive up food costs for the New Yorkers who can least afford it.
Mamdani announced that $104 million had been returned to delivery workers' pockets in the first six months of the year after a law requiring apps like UberEats and DoorDash to display tip buttons prominently went into effect on January 26. The city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection had accused both companies of burying their tipping menus and defaulting gratuity to just 10 percent, moves the agency says cost workers an estimated $550 million in lost tips.
There is one problem with Mamdani's victory lap: the law was not his. It passed under his Democratic predecessor, Eric Adams, who neither signed nor vetoed it. The New York City Council enacted the legislation in 2025, before Mamdani ever set foot in City Hall as mayor. His team's role was implementation, not creation.
That distinction did not stop Mamdani from framing the results as a signature win. In a public statement, the mayor declared:
"We changed the law, enforced it, and it's working: $104 million has gone back into the pockets of the workers who keep this city fed, rain or shine. New York will not allow billion-dollar tech companies to boost their profits by taking money from working people."
He added: "This is only the beginning."
The pushback was swift. Sam E Antar, a vocal online critic, accused Mamdani of rewriting history.
"Hey Zohran Mamdani: Nice try! You even take credit for laws you didn't pass. The NYC Council enacted these delivery-app laws in 2025 before you became mayor. Customers still aren't required to tip and they can leave $0 if they choose."
Antar went further: "Apparently, rewriting history is easier than writing legislation."
Mamdani's spokesman pushed back in a statement to Fox News, saying, "A law is only as good as its implementation." The spokesman added: "We have been intentional about enforcing the laws on the books so that we are putting money back into the pockets of working New Yorkers."
That argument, we didn't write the law, but we made it work, is a reasonable defense on its face. But it sits uneasily next to Mamdani's own language. "We changed the law" is not the same as "we enforced it." One is accurate. The other is not.
The city's numbers, at least, tell a clear story about what happened on the ground. In the four weeks before the January 26 implementation, delivery workers earned an average of $1.18 per delivery in tips. Four weeks after, that figure nearly doubled to $2.29. The city also claimed the law had "no measurable impact" on the total number of orders placed through the apps, a key talking point meant to counter industry warnings that forced tipping transparency would suppress demand.
The broader picture, as laid out by the DCWP, is damning for the apps. The agency accused UberEats and DoorDash of deliberately moving tipping to after checkout when a minimum wage law for delivery workers was enacted. The New York Post reported that average tips for Uber Eats and DoorDash drivers dropped from $3.66 per delivery to 93 cents after the companies launched their after-checkout tipping policy in December 2023, later falling to 76 cents. GrubHub drivers, whose app still allowed pre-checkout tipping, earned an average gratuity of $2.17, nearly three times what their competitors' drivers were getting.
DCWP Commissioner Samuel Levine described the agency's findings as a report that "blows the whistle on a massive scheme by Uber and DoorDash to drive down worker pay." The estimated annual loss per worker came to roughly $5,800.
DoorDash disputed the claims. John Horton, the company's head of North America public policy, said the report's conclusions "are flat out wrong." Both companies have argued that the tipping requirements violate their free speech rights and function as an added tax on consumers, a legal battle that remains unresolved.
For many New Yorkers, the question is not whether delivery drivers deserve fair tips. Most people agree they do. The question is who bears the cost, and whether a city government already struggling with affordability should be mandating higher prices on takeout orders.
One unnamed critic put it bluntly: "Is Zohran Mamdani really bragging about making Uber Eats and DoorDash more expensive for New Yorkers? I guess his 'affordability' agenda doesn't extend to New Yorkers who order in takeout."
Entrepreneur Rajat Suri was more pointed: "Great idea! Everyone loves being forced by apps to pay higher tips. This will definitely boost Mamdani's approval ratings." He added: "Maybe DoorDash and UberEats can insert a 'compelled by Mayor Mamdani' tooltip into the tip section to fairly attribute this brainwave."
Columnist Jonathan Levine offered his own take: "All the millionaires and billionaires using UberEats and DoorDash now going to pay more! Hurray!", a sarcastic jab at the notion that delivery app customers are wealthy elites rather than ordinary people looking for a convenient meal.
The delivery-app controversy arrives at a moment when Mamdani's national profile is growing, though not necessarily in the direction he would prefer. A CNN poll released Thursday showed just 30 percent of the country viewing the mayor favorably, against 35 percent unfavorable. The silver lining for Mamdani, if it qualifies: those numbers still outperformed the ratings of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the same survey.
Mamdani has drawn attention beyond city limits for reasons that have nothing to do with delivery tips. He has publicly criticized Israel and threatened to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His initial friendship with President Donald Trump has faded. None of that has made governing a city of eight million people any easier.
The city claims that between the minimum wage law and the tipping legislation, delivery worker earnings have increased by $2 billion over the past three years. That is a large number, and if accurate, it represents a genuine shift in how gig workers in New York are compensated. But the $104 million figure Mamdani is trumpeting is his administration's own claim, and it has not been independently verified.
Under the new rules, apps must now offer customers the option to tip 10 percent, enter a custom amount, or leave nothing at all. That is a reasonable framework on paper. The debate is whether mandating it through regulation, and then claiming political credit for the results, is good governance or good marketing.
When a mayor takes a bow for a law someone else passed, enforces it with one hand, and waves away affordability concerns with the other, New Yorkers are right to ask whose interests are really being served.
