Instacart ordered to pay $2.5 million

Grocery delivery service Instacart must pay Washington, D.C., $2.54 million to settle a 2020 lawsuit that alleged the company failed to pay required sales taxes and misled city consumers about its service fees over the span of two years, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine’s office announced Friday.

The Democratic attorney general alleged in the lawsuit that between 2016 and 2018, Instacart misrepresented its service fees as tips that went directly to workers, while in reality they were used to subsidize the company’s operating expenses.

Instacart must now pay $1.8 million to resolve the matter, money that Racine’s office says can be used to pay for legal fees and provide restitution to affected workers and consumers.

The company must also release $739,057 in disputed tax payments to the city, Racine’s office said in a statement, after failing to collect and pay city sales taxes on revenue from service and delivery fees from 2014 to 2020.

Bang Energy merger fails

Keurig Dr Pepper Inc.’s takeover talks with Vital Pharmaceuticals Inc., the closely held maker of Bang Energy drinks, have fallen apart, according to people familiar with the matter.

Early-stage talks between the companies were active this week but broke off after news of the potential deal became public, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.

“KDP is not currently pursuing an acquisition of Bang Energy,” a representative for Keurig Dr Pepper said in an emailed statement Friday.

“As we have shared numerous times, our top capital allocation priority is growing our business through M&A and brand/distribution partnerships and, as such, we continue to be quite active in evaluating opportunities that arise,” the representative said.

A representative for Vital Pharmaceuticals, also known as VPX, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

From wire reports