Few issues matter more to voters than food costs. Nearly 90 percent of Americans report stress about grocery prices, and more than half call it a “major” source of anxiety. So it was perhaps inevitable that New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani would enter the food-affordability debate. With campaign pledges to fight “halalflation” and “make halal eight bucks again,” Mamdani has neatly folded food into the millennial brand of democratic socialism that carried him to victory in November. But his proposals—and those advanced by his allies on the city council—will mire the Big Apple in a progressive war on cheap eats. The casualties will be the city’s dining scene and its hungry residents.
The opening salvos of this war date back to 2023, when New York became the first U.S. city to impose a minimum wage on app-based restaurant delivery drivers. This summer, the council went further (overriding a veto from Mayor Eric Adams) to extend that mandate to grocery delivery drivers. The rate for these drivers now sits at $21.44 per hour.
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The council’s expansion came as evidence mounted that the 2023 wage mandate was a mistake. Supporters of that law note that, according to city data, driver wages did rise. But the city also saw an 8 percent decline in its delivery workforce, following the familiar pattern of minimum-wage hikes: those who keep their jobs earn more, but fewer jobs are available. Delivery platforms began capping the number of active drivers, with Uber Eats reporting a waiting list of 27,000 city applicants. Food-delivery costs spiked 10 percent after the mandate took effect, while driver tips fell by 47 percent. Seattle, which passed its own minimum wage for app-based delivery drivers in 2024, had a similar experience: many drivers actually reported lower earnings as customer demand for deliveries dropped.
Despite these hard economic lessons, New York progressives show no signs of slowing their campaign against food convenience. Even before the delivery-driver fight, progressive state lawmakers had sought to repeal New York’s tipped-wage credit system. That system allows hospitality workers, including restaurant staff, to be paid below the minimum wage, so long as tips make up the difference.
The tipped-wage structure has been a pillar of the restaurant industry for more than half a century. In a sector notorious for tight margins, it lets workers earn substantial gratuities, while giving owners some control over labor costs. But Mamdani’s “$30 by ’30” pledge has reinvigorated the crusade against the tipped-wage credit. Backed by One Fair Wage—which has successfully run similar campaigns in Washington, D.C., and Chicago—a resurgent anti-tip-credit coalition is aligning itself with Mamdani’s broader minimum-wage push to mandate a standard minimum wage for all restaurant workers. Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, puts it bluntly: “Thirty dollars is the bare minimum New York could be talking about in terms of what is needed.”
Once again, economic evidence underscores the folly of the progressive proposal. Eliminating the tipped-wage credit is likely to lead to both lower server pay and higher dining costs. For example, when Initiative 82 passed in Washington, D.C., in 2022—raising restaurant-worker base wages from $5.35 per hour to just above $16 per hour over a five-year phase-in—restaurants started tacking “service fees” of up to 20 percent onto bills to recoup the near-tripling of labor costs. Full-service restaurant jobs in the District reportedly fell by 5 percent following the change, and total tipped worker earnings dropped by nearly $12 million. The backlash was so intense that the D.C. city council voted earlier this year partially to reverse the initiative and delay scheduled wage hikes. Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser wanted to go even further, advocating for a return to a minimum wage below $6.
New York progressives aren’t stopping at the minimum wage: members of the city council also want to expand the city’s menu-labeling mandates for sodium and sugar. Back in 2015, New York became the first U.S. city to require chain restaurants with 15 or more outlets to display a high-sodium warning next to salty menu items. Earlier this year, the council’s Sweet Truth Act, originally passed in 2023, took effect, extending these warnings to high-sugar foods, another national first. Now progressive council members have introduced a bill to impose these salt and sugar labeling rules on all city restaurants, even mom-and-pop joints. Given that many of the bill’s sponsors were prominent Mamdani endorsers, the bill will likely become law.
Here, too, the economic evidence is clear. When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration implemented nationwide calorie-count requirements for chain restaurants in 2018, it estimated that updating menus with new signage would cost $591–$1,773 per establishment—pocket change to a national chain, perhaps, but a costly burden for a neighborhood pizza joint. And as with minimum-wage mandates, these costs inevitably get passed on to consumers.
Meantime, these labels don’t change diners’ behavior. While some studies have found a brief “novelty effect” when nutritional labels first appear, research from Health Affairs and New York University shows no statistically significant impact on customers’ eating habits. A study examining New York’s 2015 sodium-warning mandate found no evidence that New Yorkers had cut their salt intake after the rule took effect.
New York’s regulatory campaign keeps finding new fronts. The city council’s latest idea would force restaurants and other food-service establishments to include tipping prompts in their online ordering platforms. One provision mandates that at least one of the listed options be a 20 percent tip on the customer’s total bill. The council’s stated rationale is to champion worker tips—an ironic stance, given the progressives’ simultaneous push to eliminate the tipped-wage credit system. Research does show that pre-set tip prompts can nudge customers toward higher gratuities, but there’s a catch: people hate it. “Tip creep” has become a modern irritation, and nearly a third of Americans list pre-entered tip amounts on touch screens as a pet peeve. Evidence suggests that such prompts can cause people to avoid ordering again from aggressive tip-soliciting restaurants.
In September, during his mayoral campaign, Mamdani told the New York Times: “Food is a very quick way to understand the rising cost of living in the city, because people remember the cost of staples in their lives.” His diagnosis is right, as few things hit people harder than rising prices for eggs, milk, or halal chicken over rice. But the mayor and his allies are waging a war on food that will push prices even higher for New Yorkers.
This article is part of “An Affordability Agenda,” a symposium that appears in City Journal’s Winter 2026 issue.
Photo: After New York City mandated a minimum wage for drivers, food delivery costs spiked 10 percent. (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)
