Some workers in and around Seattle are traveling miles more than usual to deliver groceries and takeout as the companies they work for try to avoid the city’s new wage law.
Seattle’s minimum wage law for gig workers took effect on Jan. 13, requiring companies like Instacart and DoorDash to pay these workers a minimum wage comparable to the city’s $19.97 hourly minimum.
But some orders and order offers from Seattle and its suburbs seen by Business Insider suggest companies are avoiding paying higher wages by sending buyers to stores outside the city to fulfill orders — even if it takes more time and adds miles to the delivery route or risks disappointing customers.
A recent Instacart offer seen by a shopper who works in the Seattle area involved driving 7.4 miles from a Total Wine store to a customer’s home in the Shoreline neighborhood to deliver hard seltzer. There was another Total Wine store about half as far from the customer’s home with a similar product selection, but it was located in the city of Seattle, said the buyer who shared the deal with BI.
As presented, the entire delivery would have occurred outside of Seattle city limits, meaning Instacart would not have had to pay the shopper under the Pay Up law.
A recent offer an Instacart shopper received in the Seattle area. Preferred source
“Someone could order ice cream, and now we’re driving five miles to deliver ice cream when they have the grocery store right across the street,” the shopper told BI. The shopper asked that their name not be used in this article for fear of retaliation from Instacart. BI verified their identity and work for Instacart.
“I’ve noticed a lot of my regular customers have stopped ordering” from outside the Seattle urban area, the buyer added.
Two other order offers seen by BI show delivery routes that involved delivering groceries from stores north of Seattle to addresses west of the town of Kirkland, Washington, although both chains have closer locations in Seattle itself.
Yet before the law was signed into law, Instacart explained how it would process orders within and outside the city. A day before Pay Up went into effect, Instacart said the company’s workers “would only be able to facilitate orders from Seattle locations to customers residing in Seattle.”
“This means that customers outside of Seattle will not be able to order from Seattle stores, and vice versa,” Instacart said.
An Instacart spokesperson confirmed the hard border exists, saying the company faces “strict requirements for doing business in Seattle that do not apply to customer or retailer locations outside the city limits.
They added: “We cannot apply different regulatory structures to the same customer order.”
But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the creation of the border is starting to disrupt buyers. Some even said it created a dead zone where it was impossible to accept orders of any kind.
One such area is 145th Street, a road that runs east–west and serves as the northern boundary between the city of Seattle and the suburban Shoreline neighborhood. The street is also home to stores frequented by Instacart shoppers, such as supermarket QFC, which is owned by Kroger.
“It doesn’t let me take an order when I’m in Seattle, Shoreline, or even at the store,” one shopper posted on Reddit in January after Instacart made changes in response to Pay Up.
Instead, the app “just gives me the error message that I can’t accept non-Seattle batches into Seattle, even when I’m not in Seattle.”
Instacart — and other gig apps — have made their opposition to Seattle’s wage law clear.
Since it took effect in January, Instacart has conducted a survey of 250 shoppers that it says shows overwhelming dissatisfaction with the law — although BI reported that the study asked about elements of the work for Instacart, such as tipping, that Instacart made changes even though Seattle didn’t need them.
Other companies, including DoorDash and Uber, have also called for all or part of the law to be repealed.
Do you work for or use Instacart, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Walmart Spark, or another gig delivery app and have a story idea to share? Contact this journalist at abitter@businessinsider.com
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