If you’re the kind of person who likes to get a private taxi for your burrito, the cost of that taxi just went up: On Thursday, August 1, DoorDash began adding a $1.99 fee to “long distance” orders, the delivery app company said in a blog post, a fee that comes on top of the $4.99 “regulatory response fee” that DoorDash and its main competitor, Uber Eats, were already charging customers in Seattle city limits.
This new fee, a DoorDash spokesperson tells Eater Seattle, will initially apply to orders with five or more miles between the customer and restaurant, though they added, “We will monitor this and make any adjustments as needed.”
This represents a new uptick in the conflict between the delivery apps and the Seattle City Council. In January, legislation passed in 2022 called PayUp went into effect, requiring delivery apps to pay a minimum wage to drivers that the apps say amounts to $26.40 an hour. DoorDash and Uber Eats responded by adding that $5 fee, outraging customers and causing restaurants to get dramatically fewer orders. The apps have claimed that this was a common-sense response to higher costs imposed on them by PayUp, while proponents of the minimum wage law say that the apps aren’t sharing information about how much the law is actually costing them, and are adding punitive fees to put pressure on Seattle politicians.
In the spring, City Council — largely seen as more business-friendly that the Council that passed PayUp — seemed prepared to fully or partially repeal the law, and DoorDash has promised to roll back the fees when a repeal happens.
But the Council has delayed voting on the repeal legislation for months as members privately debate the details. The Seattle Times reported in June that “some council members have questioned the rates set by the new bill — particularly the 35-cent-per-mile reimbursement, which is below the IRS standard of 67 cents.”
A spokesperson for Working Washington, a pro-labor group that pushed for the passage of PayUp in the first place, told Eater Seattle that Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth has tried to negotiate a compromise between workers, the apps, and restaurants, but at a meeting in June “the app companies were unwilling to budge.”
“As far as the ongoing stall-out,” the spokesperson added, “it’s a clear sign that raising wages for low-wage workers is common sense economic policy and that cutting pay for tens of thousands of workers is unsupported by Seattle and the majority of the elected officials who represent us.”
The DoorDash spokesperson said the proposed repeal legislation already represents a compromise “that would have guaranteed Dashers would earn at least $19.97 per hour in addition to tips and mileage reimbursements.”
In the blog post announcing the price increase, DoorDash made a clear connection between the company’s actions and the Council’s inaction. “Even after adding a $4.99 regulatory response fee, DoorDash continues to lose money in the market due to the minimum pay ordinance,” the company claimed. “To help promote affordability and minimize the impact on local businesses, we have held off on further increasing fees for the last six months while the Council debated a compromise bill to reduce costs of facilitating delivery. With a few members of the Council deciding they will not allow a compromise to move forward, we will have to make changes to remain operationally sustainable in Seattle.”
The Council has a lot on its plate at the moment — including a debate over a planned increase in pay for tipped workers — which may partially explain its lack of urgency around app fees.
Meanwhile, some workers and restaurants are taking matters into their own hands. Earlier this year, app deliveryman Tony Illes founded Tony Delivers as an alternative to DoorDash and Uber Eats, while fried chicken mini-chain Bok a Bok has hired its own delivery drivers partly as a response to the new fees.