Californians who have requested a refund through a food delivery p like DoorDash or Uber Eats in recent months may have noticed some changes.
Customers can now be issued a full refund to their original payment. Before the law’s adoption in January, this was a gray area, with platforms at times offering credit or refunding only the cost of food items—not additional charges like taxes and fees.
These changes resulted from a new law — Assembly Bill 578 — authored by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last October.
When orders go wrong, customers deserve transparency and real support: not hidden fees or automated runarounds, Bauer-Kahan said in a January Facebook post.
Bauer-Kahan said her inspiration for the bill came from a personal experience in which she paid for 12 pizzas but only one was delivered, CBS 8 News reported.
Here’s what Californians should know about the new law that has changed food delivery platforms for both customers and drivers.
What did AB 578 do for food delivery platform customers?
Under the new California law, food delivery platforms — such as DoorDash and Uber Eats — are required to provide customers with a full refund if their order is not delivered or is incorrect. The refund must include all taxes, commissions, fees, and gratuities. Additionally, platforms must provide customers with the option to have the refund issued to their original payment method. The platforms may deny a refund if it determines the customer was responsible for a non-delivery or evidence points to a fraudulent request.
If a customer receives an order that is only partially fulfilled, the platforms may charge the customer only for the portion of the order they received. Any taxes, fees, or gratuities stemming from the undelivered items must be adjusted to reflect the reduced order. Platforms must also allow customers to adjust the gratuity that was included prior to delivery.
Additionally, the law requires platforms to have real customer service representatives for customers to speak with should an automated system fail to address an issue.
The law also requires platforms to provide itemized breakdowns of each transaction, including food prices and fees.
What did AB 578 do for food delivery drivers?
In addition to customer protections, the law also introduces changes for food delivery platforms.
AB 578 bans platforms from using a payment model that uses tips or gratuity to offset a driver’s base pay. The new law also requires that delivery drivers receive an accurate, itemized breakdown of the pay for a delivery, including base pay, gratuities or tips, and any promotional bonuses.

Braun Strowman has a huge petite for life.
Speaking with The Monster Among Men in a Greenwich Village coffee shop ahead of his Everything on the Menu season-two launch party, a few things are immediately obvious. First, Adam Scherr (WWE Icon Strowman’s real name) is every bit as big as he’s billed, and second, he loves this food thing maybe even more than wrestling. You don’t get to 6’8″ and nearly 400 lb. (Scherr’s biggest) without doing a fair bit of eating.
But to talk with the TV veterans around the USA Network series is to learn that Scherr is a legit foodie with a serious palate (or at least, as he humbly puts it, a huge tongue). Scherr just requires a lot more foodie than most.
The latest and physically largest WWE-to-mainstream-media crossover star now has his Hollywood look together, complete with an earring that dangles low enough for even normal-sized people to see (Scherr’s beard hangs even lower). But Scherr is not just on-camera talent these days, he’s also putting in the work behind it. As The Hollywood Reporter first reported in March, Scherr and his business manager/best friend Nick Antonicelli have launched production banner Meat Castle Media in partnership with Beachfront Bargain Hunt studio Magilla Entertainment. (Meat Castle is one of Strowman’s nicknames — the man is a fortress of protein. As was his softball superstar dad — check out these Rick The Crusher Scherr highlights.)
Getting Everything on the Menu cooking was no simple task, Scherr says, even with Versant’s president of entertainment, Val Boreland, in his corner. While shooting season one, Strowman was still an active wrestler on the WWE roster. WWE was on a European tour at the time, which required transatlantic flights in-between each ride he doled out on the Strowman Express.
I was flying to Europe to wrestle, flying back to the states to film Everything on the Menu, flying back to Europe to wrestle, flying back to the states… for four weeks I was back and forth, Scherr tells THR.
Scherr, who was released by WWE but not forgotten — the pro-wrestling league is a producer on Everything on the Menu — was looking forward to a more chill season two schedule. He didn’t get it. The encore season filmed at 24 restaurants in 12 cities over seven and a half weeks. Amazingly, Scherr lost weight during the ordeal, though not for a lack of good eating.
[My weight is] diving right now because I got a couple other projects later this year that I gotta take my clothes off for, so, you know, I got to look the part, Scherr said. I actually dropped about 10 pounds throughout [season two production] and around 9 percent body fat. It was a frickin’ chore.
The 42-year-old’s frickin’ chore chart included a full 24-hour fast the day prior to shooting, followed by an hour of cardio first thing in the morning, a massive on-camera meal, some digestion time, another hour of cardio, and a second -calorie shoot at a second location. I need a n just picturing the schedule, but Scherr’s not exactly the food coma type.
Then I’d stay up until two in the morning having cocktails on the town, he said. People want to see the Monster when he’s out.
And the Monster wants to see people. Though Scherr broke into WWE as a scary, silent member of the original Wyatt Family on WWE TV, he’s a real ham outside of the squared circle. One that eats a shitload of ham.
At the end of the day, man, I’m a fucking goofball, Scherr said.
This season, fans can see Scherr goofing off in blooper reels rolling with each episode’s end credits — Scherr’s idea. With a revamped format that includes celebrity dinner guests in each episode, far more footage ends up on the cutting room floor this season than last. If he had his way, episodes should be one hour, not 30 minutes, Scherr says.
He may get his wish (and what are you airing at 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night anyway, Val?) Everything on the Menu season one ranked as the top show in its time slot across all of cable entertainment in the 18-49 demogrhic. Season one aired at 10 p.m.
As for his other job, Scherr never quite left his boots behind on the ron, the universal pro-wrestling signal for retirement (unless you’re Brock Lesnar, parently).
There’s a number with enough zeros behind it that there’s about anything I’ll do, is the reality of it, Scherr says when I ask about a return to the ring. I’m looking right now, because I feel great. My biggest thing has been fixing all the injuries.
Outside of his left leg still being about an inch and a half or two inches shorter than his right leg due to a spinal injury, Scherr, at 340 lbs. and 12-13 percent body fat, says he’s in the best she I’ve ever been.
For now, Scherr is perfectly hpy being more Tony Bourdain than Tony Atlas, who, like the strongman Strowman, was a powerlifter before becoming a WWE/E Superstar.
Bourdain is one of Scherr’s idols, he offers up.
The way he brought community together, Scherr said, it made you feel like you were sitting at that table with him while he was eating.
As quick as Scherr is to point out he’ll never be Anthony Bourdain, he points to a lull in fresh, new breakout food-TV personalities. Why not his big ass, he asks rhetorically.
Strowman/Scherr is sort of entering his Dwayne Johnson era. I ask which name we’ll know best in the next handful of years. Though Scherr says he kind of transitioning to Adam Scherr, in the reality of it, he adds, I’m always going to be Braun Strowman, and I’m grateful for that.
You call me Braun, you call me Adam — just don’t call me late for dinner, Scherr says.
Dinner time tonight is 11 p.m. ET/PT, when season two of Everything on the Menu With Braun Strowman premieres on USA Network.

The worldwide fallout from the U.S. war in Iran isn’t limited to gas prices.
The largely blocked Strait of Hormuz has become a critical failure point for global food security, Máximo Torero Cullen, chief economist of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, warned this week.
proximately a third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer trade passed through the waterway before Iran closed the shipping lane, according to U.N. Trade and Development. As a result of the conflict, the World Bank projects that fertilizer prices could jump an average of 31 percent this year.
Torero said this disruption to the fertilizer supply chain has led to an unprecedented shock to agricultural inputs that could impact global food production through next year, potentially leading to higher food prices and more hunger globally.
In the U.N. analysis, even moderate disruptions could mean increased hunger and poverty for tens of millions. But if supply chain problems stretch into next year, global food consumption could take a hit for at least the next four years.
The impacts will not be felt evenly, with countries highly dependent on food or fertilizer imports more likely to suffer. South Asia, East Africa and the Middle East pear especially vulnerable.
Torero urged countries to take immediate action to support farmers and protect global food security. But he also said the situation calls for long-term structural transformation, including reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
Because fossil fuels are typically used to make synthetic fertilizer, Iran war energy shocks are compounding the fertilizer crisis.
Other experts agree that the fallout of the war has highlighted the need for more sustainable agricultural methods and resilient supply chains to improve global food security.
The biggest takeaway is that we need to find a production system that relies less on fossil fuels, said Jasper Verschuur, research associate at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. It’s this energy price dependency that’s really making the system so vulnerable.
Verschuur pointed to more local production and green ammonia—in which fertilizer inputs are produced using renewable energy—as methods to build a more resilient supply chain in the future. Building this infrastructure, though, will take years and significant financial investments.
The food system also depends on fossil fuels to move products around the world. More local supply helps decouple food prices from energy costs.
Food security is not just about the ability to import stuff, it’s about the ability to produce it as well, said Benjamin Selwyn, who studies international development and international relations at the University of Sussex in England. Local food systems are really part of the solution.
Selwyn also pointed to sustainable agriculture methods, collectively known as agroecology, as a way to buffer against commodity price fluctuations. This can include growing multiple crops together, using manure as fertilizer, practicing small-scale farming and reducing fertilizer and pesticide needs through precision agriculture technologies such as drones.
Even as experts recommended reducing agriculture’s dependence on fossil fuels, they warned that using food crops for biofuels could contribute to global food security risks, especially during fertilizer shocks. Given the current crisis, the U.N. cautioned governments against boosting biofuel demand during shortages to limit food–fuel competition.
Corn is one of the most demanding fertilizer crops there are, and we’re using so much of it in a car engine, said Mike Badzmierowski, manager of U.S. agricultural policy at the World Resources Institute. We really have to move away from biofuels coming from food crops.
Sustainable adtations could be an effective response not only to geopolitical instability but also to the compounding food security challenges stemming from climate change and increasing extreme weather events. Against the backdrop of the ongoing energy crisis, the World Meteorological Organization projected this week that unusually strong El Niño conditions brewing in the tropical Pacific could affect crop yields this year through extreme weather.
The bigger risk is when you stack those shocks, Badzmierowski said. We have to be bold and think about system change.

Put on your Thanksgiving pants and head to Taste of Syracuse with this guide to the biggest samples $2 can buy.
The challenge: Find the largest $2 samples at the annual two-day food and music festival in Clinton Square. Armed with a food scale and te measure, two reporters set out to identify the event’s biggest bargains.
With food prices continuing to climb, getting the most for your money matters. Here are some of the Taste of Syracuse heavyweights worth down.
Giant garlic knot from Twin Trees
Twin Trees wasn’t kidding about its giant garlic knot sample. The hefty knot was the largest sample we tried all day, weighing 7 ounces and measuring 4 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall.
Warm, soft and coated in garlic butter, it came with a side of tomato sauce for dipping. The substantial portion could easily be shared by two or three people.
Pizza slice from Twin Trees
Twin Trees also offers $2 pizza slices in several varieties. We chose The Fayetteville, featuring vodka sauce, cup-and-char pepperoni, ranch dressing and fresh basil.
The tavern-cut slice weighed 2.5 ounces and measured 7 inches long.
1/2 lb. of garlic parm fries from Charlie’s Steak & Lobster
We had high hopes for a mountain of fries from Charlie’s Steak & Lobster but were surprised when handed a fairly modest per basket.
The sample weighed 3.3 ounces and measured 5.5 inches long. That’s well short of the advertised half-pound serving — even when factoring in the per basket and thick garlic sauce drizzled on top.
Frozen banana from Just Dipped
With a hot day ahead of us, With temperatures climbing, a frozen banana on a stick seemed like a smart choice.
The sample peared to be about three-quarters of a large banana, and customers could choose from the full menu of dips, coatings and drizzles. We opted for blue raspberry coating, Fruity Pebbles and a milk chocolate drizzle.
The frozen treat weighed 3.9 ounces and measured 4.5 inches long.
The General from Jillie Dogs
How much gourmet hot dog can $2 buy?
Jillie Dogs was serving samples of The General, a hot dog topped with mashed potatoes and red pepper relish. The savory snack weighed 2.2 ounces and measured about 3 inches long.
Cheesy chicken taco from XO Taco
While eating our Jillie Dogs sample, a nearby couple recommended the cheesy chicken taco from neighboring XO Taco.
Despite a long-looking line, the wait moved quickly. The mini soft taco was filled with pulled chicken and topped with queso, Cheeto dust and crushed nachos.
The taco weighed 3.5 ounces and measured nearly 5 inches across. The couple told us they knew several people who returned for seconds, and after trying it, we understood why.
Chicken arepa from Ruby’s
Colombian food truck Ruby’s offered stuffed arepas as its sample option, with guests choosing between cheese and chicken.
We picked the chicken arepa, which came packed with chicken, pico de gallo and guacamole inside a crispy white corn cake. The flavorful sample weighed 2.8 ounces and measured just over 3 inches across.
Butter Face ice cream from Gilligan’s
Traveling from Chenango County, Gilligan’s brought its house-made ice cream, known for inventive flavors ranging from dill pickle to Fireball whiskey.
We sampled Butter Face, a cookie butter ice cream with Biscoff cookie crumbles and raspberry swirl. The sweet treat weighed 2.1 ounces, and the cup measured about 3 inches wide.
Mango lemonade or ‘Cuse Popcorn from Witches Brew
A live entertainment studio might seem like an unlikely participant at a food festival, but Witches Brew returns each year with its immersive potion-inspired beverage service.
Its mango lemonade sample delivered 5.4 fluid ounces in a 2.5-inch cup, offering a refreshing break from the summer heat.
The $2 serving of ‘Cuse Popcorn weighed 2 ounces but arrived in a generous per boat measuring 6.5 inches long. The sweet-and-salty snack was drizzled with caramel sauce and topped with crushed Oreos.
Dizzy Pig doughnut from Glazed and Confused
The doughnut that helped launch Glazed and Confused remains one of the vendor’s most popular Taste of Syracuse offerings.
For $2, visitors receive a fried cake doughnut topped with mle glaze and candied bacon crumbles. At 3.7 ounces, it was one of the heaviest samples we tried.
Giant pickle on a stick from Easy Squeezy
Pickle lovers should make this booth a priority.
For $2, guests get a crunchy dill pickle on a stick weighing 5 ounces and measuring 4.75 inches long. The second heaviest sample we tried was simple, refreshing and easy to eat while walking through the festival.

Burger King is adding fuel to the fast-food fire with a hot new summer menu item.
Its new Loaded Jaleño Whopper promises plenty of heat, but some burger lovers say the chain’s latest creation is little more than a spicy copy of a Wendy’s sandwich.
Earlier this week, Burger King announced three seasonal food additions, including the Jaleño Whopper, a limited-time sandwich topped with American cheese, crispy jaleños, pickled jaleños and a creamy jaleño sauce.
As the weather heats up, we know our Guests are craving for fun flavors that they experience and share, boasted Joel Yashinsky, chief marketing officer for Burger King US and Canada. These new limited-time menu items deliver the type of innovation Guests have been asking for, and we’re continuing to listen and give them what they want.
But the fiery burger, which the chain says delivers the spicy kick guests have been asking for, has a strikingly similar profile to Wendy’s recently debuted burger.
That chain’s Jaleño Ranch Cheeseburger, which returned to menus this spring, also features beef, American cheese, pickled jaleños, lettuce, tomato, and a creamy spicy sauce. The biggest difference? Wendy’s uses jaleño ranch, while Burger King opted for a creamy jaleño spread.
But pulling a fast one on fast-food enthusiasts wasn’t likely, and fans were quick to brand the Whopper iteration as Burger King’s response to Wendy’s.
The new sandwich arrives just months after Burger King made its first major changes to the classic Whopper in nearly a decade, upgrading the bun, mayonnaise and packaging after customer feedback.
Tried the Loaded Jaleño Whopper today, critiqued one Reddit user. A decent effort, but still just mid-tier. The Jaleños were good, the crispy jaleño mix was fine, I was barely able to detect the sauce at all. I really wish they had gone for some pepper jack cheese and a better sauce for this one. I think it is pretty much on par with the jaleño ranch burger at Wendy’s.
Others called it out more bluntly.
Ngl if y’all want back in the game you gonna have to match Wendys food quality. Frozen slop ain’t it no more, wrote one heated X user.
But despite the copy-cat claims, Burger King has been known for making some sizzling versions in the past — ones that still have fans in a chokehold.
The Angry Whopper was first introduced in 2008 and featured melted habanero cheese, bacon and fresh jaleño slices with spicy onion petals, topped with Angry sauce. Over the years, BK has brought back the fan favorite for a limited time, but this is the one that the internet clings to.
Other fast-food chains have made spicy iterations like Carl’s Jr. and Jack in the Box, so it’s not exactly an out-of-left-field addition on Burger King’s part.
For burger lovers, the winner may come down to taste.
Burger King’s latest Whopper certainly packs a kick. The bigger question, according to critics, is whether the chain cooked up something new — or simply reheated Wendy’s recipe.