The concept behind a pending bill in Albany seems simple: Apps like Instacart and Shipt would be required to disclose if their prices are different from the prices on the shelves of grocery stores where delivery workers pick up products for customers.

The apps don’t see it as simple at all.

Five giants of the rapidly growing grocery-delivery industry — Uber, Grubhub, Shipt, Instacart and DoorDash — sent Gov. Kathy Hochul a letter last month. They urged her to insist on changes to the bill state lawmakers overwhelmingly passed earlier this year, a vote that came after the companies already convinced the Legislature to water down a prior, more-restrictive version of the measure.

“The various companies that were pretty relentlessly lobbying against this bill I felt were acting like petulant children on this issue,” said Skoufis, a Democrat.

“ I think a large majority of consumers, they just assume that the produce, the milk, the bread that they're buying online is going to be the same price as those products are in the store,” he said. “And it turns out in many, if not most, cases, there’s a significant markup online compared to the price in store.”