The issue at doordash is the following:

(1) Drivers are paid in 2 factors, a tip provided by the user, and a per delivery fee provided by doordash thats variable, and generally in the industry is between 10 and 20% of the basket cost

(2) doordash additionaly guaranteed a total "minimum compensation" per delivery up front that was like ~20% of the cost of the basket

(3) Doordash would use the tips users paid to offset the amount they would pay drivers in order to meet the "minimum comp guarantee", so if you ordered 100 dollars in food, and tip 20 dollars, and the minimum compensation on the order was 20 dollars,doordash would pay the driver nothing, and your whole tip would sub for driver pay. If instead you tipped 0 dollars on your 100 dollar basket, doordash would pay the driver 20 dollars out of its own funds to meet the minimum comp. Likewise if you tipped 10 dollars, doordash woud pay 10 dollars.

>I see when ordering online with whole foods /amazon a note saying that drivers get 100% of the tip.

If I remember correctly, the prior controversy was that DoorDash (or whomever) would give them the tip 100% but then take an equal or weighted portion from the company's contribution.

The way it has worked in the past is that drivers get 100% of the tip, but the tip amount is subtracted from their base pay.

Company tells the worker a delivery pays $15, you tip $5, the company reduces their portion to $10, the worker gets $15 total. You tip $10? The company pays $5, worker still walks away with $15.

Given that DD also had a minimum they would pay, regardless of tip, that can also be stated as

- We will pay you $X

- We will make sure you make at least $Y

If you make the wording changes

- $X == <wait staff minimum wage>

- $Y == <normal minimum wage>

Then it becomes clear that this is exactly how restaurants work; with the caveat that it's per delivery instead of per hour.

This framing would certainly be more transparent. I doubt though that DoorDash would want to explicitly adopt a compensation practice that's illegal in seven states including their home state of California (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped).

Assuming you take == as "works the same as" not "is the same monetary value", then what about it is illegal?

I imagine something like "number of items" or "number of bags" or "total weight/volume of order" is an input into the default tip formula.

Which makes sense, as the quantity is what actually matters to the delivery person.