Wedged between Georgetown’s Blue Alley and M Street’s bustling commercial sprawl, Italian eatery 90 Second Pizza is not just a popular spot for Georgetown University students, but a symbol of the changing demands of Washington, D.C.’s food industry.
According to founder Joe Farruggio, about half of 90 Second Pizza’s business is rooted in delivery outsourced to apps like Grubhub and Uber Eats — a welcome departure from previous pizza ventures where he employed drivers at more than 30% of his total cost.
“I hope it lasts us a long time,” Farruggio told The Hoya. “For me, I’d rather be making 500 pizzas instead of 300 pizzas.”
Both Grubhub and Uber Eats are “gig” platforms, where workers deliver food on an on-demand basis and are paid per delivery, not per hour. These apps rely on workers whose independent contractor status absolves corporations of responsibilities concerning wages and worker protections.
In states like Minnesota and California, gig work companies often face state and local regulations related to wage disputes, independent contractor laws, and other labor regulations.
In D.C., in contrast, these companies can avoid multiple levels of regulations, according to Katie Wells, an adjunct capstone advisor in the urban and regional planning program at Georgetown who studies gig economy dynamics. Because D.C. is not a state and is governed by a 13-member city council, not a state legislature, gig-economy companies only need to navigate city law, rather than lobbying state legislators to overrule local regulations, a process called preemption, Wells told The Hoya.
“A lot of companies feel like as soon as they can get D.C. to pass something, they know they’re done; they don’t have to worry about state preemption,” Wells said.
Indeed, in recent years, the gig economy in the District has flourished as gig work companies have focused lobbying efforts on preventing regulatory measures from the D.C. government, cementing their footing across the city.
However, amid the struggle between government regulation and corporate interests, food delivery workers — many of them migrant workers — often cannot make ends meet.
Alejandro Gonzalez, a migrant food delivery worker in D.C. from Venezuela, said many migrant workers have no other options but to work gig economy jobs.
“There is no organization that helps us. We have never received anything. If you don’t work, you have nothing,” Gonzalez told The Hoya in Spanish.
Since 2022, when border-state governors began bussing Venezuelan migrants to D.C., over 13,000 migrants have arrived in the District from Texas and Arizona — many of whom now work in food delivery.
Abel Núñez, the executive director of Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), an organization that helps immigrants integrate into the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, said the food delivery industry offers these migrants a temporary solution to a long-term plan in the United States.
“A lot of the time, they’re just in survival mode, so they are happy that they can do a job that can sustain themselves, their families and send money to their families in their country of origin,” Núñez told The Hoya.
Núñez said food delivery has provided these scores of immigrants an important foothold in the economy.
“It is a viable market for them to get in, and it was a way for them to make money without having to depend on government subsidies of charity,” Núñez said.
According to Núñez, the Venezuelans who comprise a large proportion of D.C.’s migrant population often hail from urban areas, unlike other immigrant groups.
Núñez said that in finding a niche in food delivery, the migrants replicate life in their country of origin.
“People thought that they were gonna integrate into the existing places where immigrants work, right, in the service industry, construction industry,” Núñez said. “But I think that what they misread is that these were not immigrants from the same places of the existing immigrant community here, so they were not from Central America, they were primarily from Venezuela and they were urban dwellers, they were not rural dwellers.”
“Because of that, the Venezuelans were already coming in, being used to and having the ability to drive these vehicles, the mopeds, the motorcycles, because it’s a really well-used mode of transportation in those countries, not only for commuting, but also for work,” Núñez added. “They replicated what they knew.”
A low barrier to entry furthers the industry’s appeal to migrants: Delivery workers in D.C. often ride mopeds or walk to deliver food and do not need documentation or cars to work.
According to Isabella Stratta (SFS ’25), who has researched D.C.’s gig economy with Wells, many migrants purchase driver accounts to compensate for a lack of documentation.
“This is a low-barrier job in that you don’t need to speak English,” Stratta told The Hoya. “You don’t even need to have a car because you scooter or even walk and do deliveries.”
However, in working in the delivery industry, drivers also face unpaid work — workers are not paid for waiting on the job, meaning they often make less than minimum wage every hour — and risks of being involved in traffic collisions and assaults or harassment on the job, according to a 2023 report that Wells and Stratta cowrote.
In their report, Wells and Stratta interviewed 41 D.C. delivery drivers — of whom 51% reported feeling unsafe while working, 23% were involved in traffic collisions and 49% received underpayment or no payment for their labor.
Gonzalez said he fears for his safety while working.
“The problems that I face are if I fall from the moped, I could kill myself, or a car could crash into me, since those are risks that one takes,” Gonzalez said.
According to Gonzalez, with few other options to turn to, food delivery offers a safety net for migrants whose options are limited.
“Here one does not adapt, we only work, because it is almost the only thing there is. But I really believe that thousands of people would want to leave the country or make some money there and return,” Gonzalez said.
Because gig economy companies pay workers per delivery, these firms are able to force their workforce to be efficient, even as they lack safety regulations, Wells said.
“It’s the most ideal workforce. Can they complain? Do they have anything else to do? Can they be offered the two- and three-dollar deliveries? Absolutely. They certainly don’t seem to be taking measures to protect this workplace, either in the dangers or to ensure a stable income,” Wells said.
Grubhub says it adheres to city laws and provides safety features like in-app emergency provisions for drivers, driver safety programs, and reduced-price dashboard cameras for drivers through its partnership with a dashboard camera company.
“We’re committed to maintaining a safe and seamless environment for everyone who uses our platform, including our delivery partners in D.C. and beyond,” a Grubhub spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “As part of this commitment, we abide by all rules and regulations impacting delivery and will continue partnering with the District to make sure delivery works for everyone.”
Wells said these companies need to be held accountable for benefiting from food delivery workers without paying them fair wages or offering them safety protections.
“I think these companies aren’t paying their fair share, and they are certainly benefiting from this migrant labor,” Wells said. “These workers are barely getting by, let alone not being in debt because of the cost of gas or new batteries for motor scooters.”
Wells said both gig economy services and city residents benefit from the negligent treatment of delivery drivers.
“It’s no different in many ways than the agriculture industry that has used migrant labor in a really exploitative and predatory way for decades,” Wells said. “But there is something very accessible of the question of migration and workers’ rights by having it happen in a city and to wealthy people.”
Beyond exploitation from food delivery companies, workers also face risks from the customers they serve: Of the workers Wells and Stratta interviewed, 41% said they experienced assaults or harassment.
In October, individuals set fire to four Venezuelan delivery workers’ motor scooters in Southeast D.C., in what police believe is a deliberate act of arson.
One of those workers, Junior Valera, said he relies on his moped to make a living.
“We use these to work, to eat,” he told NBC4 Washington in October. “To pay rent, help our families. Without them, how? We can’t.”
Gonzalez said that discrimination is commonplace for immigrant food delivery workers.
“It is super difficult, and others treat us badly here,” Gonzalez said. “When one goes to deliver food, we are discriminated against because we are migrants.”
The D.C. government has increasingly pushed for regulation on the food industry — particularly targeting the mopeds that many drivers ride.
Since 2022, registrations of motor-driven cycles, including mopeds, have more than doubled: In fiscal year 2022, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles registered 54 mopeds; in 2023, the department registered 143. Many more mopeds are unregistered.
In response, the D.C. Council has introduced several bills increasing regulation, while the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has stepped up traffic enforcement around mopeds.
In June, MPD implemented Operation Ride Right, which targeted traffic enforcement of unregistered motorized scooters in high traffic areas, an initiative largely in response to the throngs of delivery workers chaotically driving mopeds through crowded commercial districts.
“We launched the operation to try to increase compliance with registering those bicycles, ensuring they are properly registered,” a spokesperson for MPD told The Hoya.
The initiative has proven effective. According to the MPD spokesperson, the MPD has impounded 670 motorized cycles and made 145 arrests for operating without a permit, issuing nearly 700 tickets, since June.
Besides MPD’s escalating enforcement, the city also aims to mandate more stringent registration measures on moped dealerships in the Moped Registration Accountability Amendment Act of 2024, introduced in May, which would require that companies renting mopeds to workers register and insure their mopeds.
In addition, the Council passed the Carrier-for-Hire Oversight and Enforcement Act on Dec. 3, which will require apps to disclose more data to District agencies and require more visible identification for food delivery vehicles — which may destabilize the industry and result in losses for food delivery workers lacking job security.
Councilmember Charles Allen, who represents Ward 6’s commercial corridors, has spearheaded several efforts to regulate food delivery. Allen’s advocacy for safer driving standards and accountability for drivers, such as with the Moped Registration Accountability Amendment Act, is largely based on his constituents’ concerns.
“We hear from a lot of constituents that want to see delivery drivers operate much more safely than they are,” a spokesperson for Allen told The Hoya. “If you’re using our streets, there needs to be some uniformity that can help create a sense of order to ensure safety for both the driver of the vehicle, as well as pedestrians and other road users.”
However, delivery industry giants have significant interests in reducing city regulations governing the gig economy, Stratta said.
“Unsurprisingly, whenever a bill was introduced that might affect them negatively, you saw a surge in lobbying, spending, and visits,” Stratta said. “If you don’t have a proactive approach in terms of regulation, it does create an opportunity for private interests.”
Wells said that city officials struggle to balance competing interests in regulating the food industry.
“D.C. constantly has this attitude of we don’t want to be the suit, the ugly law firm lawyer, trying to be cool about innovation,” Wells said. “At a city level, there’s enough sentiment in parts of government and business that they want it here.”
“Certainly there are benefits of workers being able to earn money,” Wells added. “However, this is far from a stable job.”
As D.C.’s rules change, Núñez said he hopes CARECEN can centralize information for migrant drivers, allowing them to work towards a cooperative and constructive relationship with the city.
“We want to serve as the organizing entity, to be the institution they can trust,” Núñez said. “We want to ensure that they can continue doing this and this continues to be a viable way of making money.”
Núñez said he hopes his organization can help drivers get the education needed to acclimate to these changing laws.
“Without a period of education, without a period of really allowing them to integrate into how we do things, all you’re gonna do is gonna have a negative effect because all of these people that get pushed out of this industry will probably not go to other industries,” Núñez said.
“If dealt only from the punitive side and not figuring out how to integrate them, the only thing these laws will do is to make drivers leave the industry and limit their ability to make money,” Núñez added.
Núñez said the government should work with all stakeholders to adjust laws affecting delivery drivers.
“How do we adjust the existing policies to make sure that it’s a win-win for everyone, meaning that the drivers are allowed to continue to do their work, but they do it in a way that’s acceptable within our laws?” Núñez said. “Bring all the stakeholders, government residents, drivers, restaurants that are making money out of this; they should have a say-so and figure out what programs can be done.”
Stratta said drivers are also becoming increasingly receptive to the idea of formally organizing to advocate for their protection, yet coalition building itself remains a challenge.
“Gig work is very independent work, so there are very few places that you can meet other workers and talk about what you are experiencing,” Stratta said. “If workers can organize, that’s a great catalyst for change.”
However, Núñez said food delivery drivers are often reticent to build coalitions strong enough to affect D.C. law.
“They’re hesitant because they think everything is against them,” Núñez said. “We need to figure out how the government can play a role of regulating them, but in a way that helps promote public safety and their ability to earn a living.”
