EAST NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open a slate of government-owned grocery stores stirred up critics who roasted the idea as the democratic socialist’s first step toward creating communist bread lines in the city.
The mayor offered a different vision for the city-owned shops on Monday, announcing that they would instead provide a 30% discount on produce, meat and a host of other kitchen staples as a way to offset the rising food prices in one of America’s most expensive cities.
The five stores are expected to be placed in each of the city’s five boroughs, with the first set to open toward the end of 2027 in the Bronx. He plans to have all five operational by the end of his four-year term.
“Thirty percent off adds up to real money for New Yorkers,” Mamdani, a Democrat, said at a news conference at a warehouse in East New York while standing in front of a display of fruits and vegetables. “In the wealthiest city, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, no New Yorker should have to worry about being able to afford to feed their family.”
The city has started the process of picking private operators to handle day-to-day operations of the shops. The administration will provide storefronts while covering rental costs and property taxes, officials said.
Mamdani campaigned on the proposal as a plank in a wider affordability platform centered on shifting the power of government toward policies to help the city’s struggling working class. At one point last year, he framed the idea as a modest experiment and said if it doesn’t work, “C’est la vie, then the idea was wrong.”
Still, the plan has rankled some smaller grocers and owners of the city’s ubiquitous bodega corner stores, who worry they won’t be able to compete with discounted food prices at the city-run shops.
At his news conference, Mamdani said the city-owned stores would not sell hot food or other items like beer or cigarettes, as a way to avoid sapping away profitable business from private stores.
“We are not looking to compete with bodegas or grocery stores when it comes to their ability to survive. What we’re looking to do is to provide affordability that is guaranteed to New Yorkers,” he said.
Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group, called for a more thorough public analysis of the program’s cost, its impact on unsubsidized grocery stores, as well as an examination of how the city could address the root causes of rising grocery prices.
“It is hard to see how subsidizing grocery stores — and groceries for everyone who shops there — is the most cost-effective way to increase affordability or reduce food insecurity for struggling New Yorkers,” Rein said in a statement
The mayor’s office has selected sites for its grocery stores in Manhattan and the Bronx, but it was not immediately clear where shops would be located in Brooklyn, Queens or Staten Island.
