Are NYC’s Laws Hampering Instacart’s Delivery Model?

In a blog entry, Instacart warned of “major changes” for shoppers, or its independent delivery workers, in the New York City region due to new laws over minimum pay. The company claimed city legislators don’t “understand how grocery delivery differs from restaurant delivery.”

Beginning in late January, New York City began requiring third-party apps — including Instacart, DoorDash and Uber Eats — to pay grocery delivery workers a minimum of $21.44 per hour, excluding tips, for the total time workers are logged into a platform’s app. The rate is the same as those applied to restaurant delivery workers (increased by a dollar since April 2025) under laws passed in 2021.

Prior to the 2021 wage increase, delivery workers for apps earned an average of $5.39 an hour prior to tips, according to city estimates.

Under the changes, Instacart shoppers in the region will now face limits on the windows during which they can go online to take orders, as well as caps on the number of shoppers who can be online at a time. They also will only be able to access one-at-a-time batch offers, instead of an available batch list.

Instacart also began charging a $5.99 “Regulatory Response Fee” to NYC app users last month in response to the laws. Consumers may also face longer delivery times as shoppers are now limited to one order at a time — and as smaller batches become more frequently rejected.

Instacart States that NYC’s Restrictions Force Changes Against Customer Desires

In the blog entry, Instacart said the main problem is the laws require delivery apps to pay an hourly minimum for delivery drivers, regardless of whether they’re actively delivering orders.

Instacart wrote, “Unlike while on a batch, that idle time cannot be verified. A shopper can appear ‘online’ without actually being available to accept or complete a batch, and there is no way to distinguish between true availability and time spent away from the app.”

The laws, according to Instacart, will force it to “pay for large amounts of idle time that may not correspond to actual work or real-time demand. Under that model, the app simply cannot operate as it has.”

In its lawsuit filed against the city over the regulations, Instacart argued that unlike restaurant delivery drivers on other platforms, its grocery service employs personal shoppers made up mostly of women, caregivers, and people who work on a part-time basis. They are paid a base “batch” rate based on estimated time and effort for each particular order.

Instacart said in its blog entry that its shoppers widely favor flexible schedules, with 75% indicating flexibility is the primary reason they work with Instacart. The average shopper works fewer than 10 hours per week, 70% have other sources of income, and most say they would turn down even a 50% increase in earnings if it meant giving up control over their schedule, according to Instacart.

Instacart stated, “Despite what shoppers have said they value, the city moved forward with a one-size-fits-all framework without meaningful engagement with grocery delivery workers or a serious effort to understand how grocery delivery differs from restaurant delivery.”