By Marco Shalma.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order to take on these junk fees and deceptive subscription traps, promising transparency and consumer relief as part of an affordability push.
But here’s the brutal truth most headlines gloss over: cracking down on hidden fees isn’t free, fast, or simple. It will cost money, tax city systems, and could even squeeze honest small businesses all before anyone sees a penny shaved off their delivery bill.
Let’s break it down.
WHAT THE CITY IS ACTUALLY DOING
On January 5, the mayor signed Executive Order 09, officially establishing a Citywide Junk Fee Task Force and directing the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) to monitor, investigate, and enforce actions against deceptive or hidden charges in everyday transactions.
This isn’t a slogan. It’s a bureaucratic machine with a formal mandate. The task force will include representatives from multiple city agencies and has broad authority to coordinate rules, enforcement, and compliance efforts.
There’s a good intention here. The city says New Yorkers deserve to know the full cost of goods and services upfront. That’s fair. But the mechanics of delivering that? That’s where it gets messy.
BREAKING DOWN THE REAL COSTS
Here’s what most of the press release doesn’t tell you:
1. Enforcement costs real money.
The city doesn’t have a magic pot for new agencies. Task forces require staff, legal teams, data analysts, compliance units, and enforcement infrastructure. That adds payroll and administrative costs to a budget that is already stretched and tends to be spent before the year begins.
Nobody is talking about how many millions this will cost. A dedicated enforcement effort at this scale easily reaches multi-million-dollar annual costs once you include salaries, training, legal resources, and monitoring systems. That’s money that then isn’t going into housing programs, school kitchens, or restaurant small-biz support.
2. Enforcement timelines are long.
This kind of change doesn’t happen overnight. There’s a reason pricing transparency laws in other states have taken years of rulemaking, public hearings, legal challenges, and adjustments before any practical effect hits consumers. It’s not flipping a switch.
3. Hidden fees don’t just magically disappear.
When regulators force transparency in one part of pricing, companies often repackage those costs into the base price or find adjacent loopholes. You might see higher sticker prices instead of fees added at checkout. The same total cost, just less sneaky. That’s happened in other markets with similar rules.
4. Honest small businesses could get caught in the crossfire.
A lot of hidden fee enforcement targets big platforms, delivery services, ticket sellers, subscription models. But small restaurants and independent shops sometimes get pulled in because they rely on third-party partners that do slip fees into orders. Without careful design, enforcement could penalize mom-and-pop operators for compliance issues they don’t fully control.
This isn’t theory. It’s what business groups have warned about when similar enforcement measures expand without clear exemptions or support for small operators.
THE SAVINGS ARE REAL, BUT NOT DIRECTLY TO YOUR WALLET
Mayor Mamdani and his team frame the task force as hitting corporate cheekiness — companies hiding fees in fine print, slipping on clicks after checkout, and trapping people in automatic renewals. Everywhere from gyms to event tickets to deliveries gets named in the rhetoric.
No one likes surprise charges. And yes, if enforcement is successful, it could reduce some of those. But here’s the catch:
• There’s no mechanism for refunds to individuals for past fees.
• Savings are diffuse, spread across millions of transactions citywide over time.
• Any effect on your check. Whether that’s delivery fees, ticket prices, or ordering charges is gradual and uncertain.
New York might see better transparency. But that rarely translates into a direct, noticeable drop on your check at the end of the night.
WHAT THE CITY COULD DO AT LOWER COST AND FASTER SPEED
Look, the idea of banning hidden fees isn’t terrible. It deserves debate and action. But there are smarter, cheaper, and quicker ways to address this than building a full enforcement silo upfront:
1. All-in pricing disclosure only:
Require businesses to show the total cost upfront on menus, screens, and checkout pages. Let consumers hold companies accountable through reporting tools. That avoids heavy enforcement machinery.
2. Community reporting systems:
Empower New Yorkers to submit prices and screenshots through a public portal. Let the city prioritize high-impact cases instead of investigating every small discrepancy.
3. Partner with state/federal efforts:
The Federal Trade Commission and some states already work on junk fee rules that overlap with this effort. NYC could leverage that instead of trying to reinvent around local enforcement alone.
4. Flexible compliance support for small businesses:
Instead of penalizing honest operators, invest in education and compliance assistance. That’s cheaper than court actions and keeps local restaurants competitive.
These alternatives are less eye-catching than a task force announcement. But they might do more for everyday costs without doubling down on bureaucracy.
THE POPULIST TRAP POLITICS
This is classic populist messaging: We hear your pain. We’re acting. We’re making life cheaper. It sounds good, and it resonates because hidden fees do feel like modern daylight robbery.
But a New York Eats Here reality check has to ask: are we solving the problem or just creating a new mechanism that costs money, takes years, and may end up shifting fees rather than eliminating them?
Politically it feels bold. Enforcement, crackdowns, consumer protection. But on paper, it’s easy to say and hard to execute well in a way that actually impacts daily life.
The city’s own affordability crisis is real. Complaints about hidden costs are real. But these costs exist on top of rent spikes, healthcare costs, grocery price inflation, real estate taxes, and subway fare hikes. Tackling a small piece of the consumer cost puzzle is fine but it shouldn’t swallow millions in budget allocations without clear, near-term benefits.
WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU AS A DINER
New York Eats Here doesn’t cover policy for the sake of press clippings. We cover it because it hits dinner bills, menus, and restaurant survival. So here’s the real NYEH interpretation:
Delivery app fees might change. Possibly. But likely in how they’re presented, not necessarily in absolute cost.
Restaurants could face compliance scrutiny even if they aren’t the ones adding the fees — especially on third-party order platforms.
Smaller operators might need to hire compliance assistance just to avoid fines in a complex enforcement environment.
Political victories rarely translate into cheaper menus unless the policy is surgical, not bureaucratic.
Everything about this initiative sounds like savings. But in a city with exploding costs, enforcement bills, and thin restaurant margins, the real risk is:
You end up paying for it through your taxes or through higher base prices, not lower bills.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Yes, NYC’s crackdown on hidden fees and subscription tricks could improve transparency. That’s a legitimate goal.
But transparency ≠ cheaper dinner.
Task forces cost real money.
Enforcement takes time.
Small businesses can get caught in the crossfire.
Fees often get baked into base prices anyway.
Political messaging sells solutions. Real-life costs money before it saves money. New Yorkers deserve honest pricing. They also deserve honest math. Because if we end up paying more to enforce lower fees, then the policy hasn’t made life more affordable. It’s just made government bigger.
And in this city, you don’t eat on bigger government. You eat on cheaper dinners, fewer surprises, and menus that reflect reality, not spin.
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