New York City has for the first time penalized a food-delivery app for overcharging restaurants — reaching a settlement of more than $875,000 with the delivery service HungryPanda over illegal fees the city says it charged small businesses, many of them immigrant-owned.
The settlement, announced by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration alongside Deputy Mayor Julie Su and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Samuel A.A. Levine, resolves violations of the city’s Third-Party Food Delivery Service Laws — and marks the first time DCWP has enforced those rules against an app for harming business owners rather than workers or diners.
What the app did
New York caps what delivery apps can charge restaurants: 15% per order for delivery and 5% for other services. Investigators found HungryPanda exceeded those caps, in some cases charging immigrant-owned restaurants thousands of dollars in fees the law does not allow. The settlement provides restitution to more than 380 NYC businesses — many in neighborhoods like Sunset Park in Brooklyn and Flushing in Queens — and requires the company to disclose its fees clearly, adopt compliance policies, and file annual compliance certifications going forward.
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The fee-cap law was born of the pandemic, when restaurants said the apps’ commissions were unsurvivable. Most enforcement since has focused on what apps pay delivery workers. This action flips that lens to the restaurants — and specifically to small, immigrant-run shops that are least likely to have the legal help to spot an overcharge buried in a monthly statement. It signals that the city intends to police the restaurant side of the ledger, not just the labor side.
Source: NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection / Mayor’s Office, “Mamdani Administration Acts to Protect Immigrant Restaurant Owners From Delivery App Junk Fees” (2026). Figures are the city’s.
