That Food Delivery Is Soon Going To Cost You a Little More in D.C.

You may soon start seeing a new fee tacked on to the end of that DoorDash or UberEats receipt.

The D.C. Council on Tuesday approved a new 20-cent fee for third-party deliveries in D.C., joining only Colorado and Minnesota in adding a dedicated charge to what has become an increasingly popular way to get everything from your next meal to weekly groceries.

The fee was added during the Council’s challenging two-month deliberations over the city’s 2027 budget, which saw lawmakers struggle to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for social programs that Mayor Muriel Bowser had proposed cutting as part of her attempt to close a $1.1 billion budget hole.

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Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau proposed the new fee in part to restore funding for food-access programs for low-income households, but also to pay for a law she authored a year ago to better oversee, regulate and assist third-party delivery services – many of which are best known by their fleets of moped drivers darting in and out of traffic across the city.

“There’s a whole bunch of healthy food programs that are really important and always get cut,” she said. “I’m excited to be able to fund them with something that feels related.”

DoorDash unsuccessfully fought the fee, delivering a petition with 500 signatures opposing it to lawmakers, running ads on social media, commissioning a poll that in which 63% of respondents said they didn’t support the fee, and parking a mobile digital display outside the Wilson Building.

A spokesperson for the company said the fee was akin to balancing the city’s budget “off the backs of working people in D.C. who can’t afford another tax,” and said that more than 20% of DoorDash deliveries in 2025 went to low-income communities. The company filled some 150,000 orders from residents using SNAP food benefits, the spokesperson said.

“I have specific concerns how this proposal would increase costs for SNAP recipients and individuals who may use delivery services for groceries and medication,” said Ward 7 Council member Wendell Felder, noting that wards east of the Anacostia River have the fewest grocery stores nearby and highest proportion of low-income residents.

Bowser similarly opposed the fee, telling lawmakers in June that “while each new fee or tax hike mandated by the Council may seem small in isolation, over time they add up to thousands of dollars in additional costs to our residents and businesses.”

Nadeau brushed aside those concerns. “If a person orders once a week it will amount to $10 a year,” she told NOTUS on Tuesday. “We should be real honest about who can afford to order food in the first place. Groceries and access to that I’m sympathetic to. Some of the money is going to subsidize grocery delivery, so I think it offsets that concern.”

DoorDash, UberEats and other third-party delivery services already charge their own delivery and service fees, and D.C.’s existing 5-cent bag fee often also applies. The new fee wouldn’t apply to delivery services operated by grocery stores themselves.

The fee is expected to raise $6.6 million per year. Of that, some $200,000 will go toward extending an existing pilot program through which 1,000 low-income D.C. residents get a free 12-month Instacart membership to help cover grocery delivery costs.

Another $200,000 will be used to make up for lost federal funding that paid for grocery deliveries by Dreaming Out Loud, a nonprofit grocery store and cafe in Ward 8. And $1 million will go to Nourish D.C., a program that gives grants to new food businesses in underserved neighborhoods

The legislatures in Maryland and Virginia similarly considered third-party delivery fees over the last two years, but neither approved them.

The fight over D.C.’s new fee provides insight into the challenging fiscal future that the city and its next mayor are likely to face next year, with declining revenue and persistent demands from advocacy groups for increased funding for social programs.

Ward 4 Council member Janeese Lewis George, the Democratic nominee for mayor, has made broad promises that collectively could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. She has pledged to squeeze savings out of existing government operations and find new sources of revenue, including a proposed Business Activity Tax that would target law firms, lobbying shops, and consultancies that don’t currently have to pay the city’s business taxes.

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson is planning a public hearing in the fall to consider revenue-raising options, and has said he expects some type of tax increase to be adopted within the next year. As part of the 2027 budget, Mendelson added a provision requiring the city’s chief financial officer to collect more details on what it would take to implement the Business Activity Tax.

“I’m not sure the Business Activity Tax is the best option, but it gets a lot of attention from the liberal advocacy groups,” he told NOTUS. “Let’s just have a more factual awareness of what it is.”