{"id":238535,"date":"2026-05-20T21:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/238535\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T21:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:09:12","slug":"zohran-mamdani-just-announced-nycs-1st-city-owned-grocery-store-could-the-idea-help-reverse-rising-food-prices-across-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/238535\/","title":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani just announced NYC’s 1st city-owned grocery store. Could the idea help reverse rising food prices across the U.S.?"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced this week that the Big Apple\u2019s first city-owned grocery store will open in the South Bronx sometime next year, delivering on a central promise of his dark-horse 2025 campaign<\/a> \u2014 and pitching the project, which aims to put one public, nonprofit supermarket in each borough by the end of his first term, as \u201cphysical proof of our conviction that government can be a force for good.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We are going to use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table,” Mamdani, a 34-year-old Democrat and democratic socialist<\/a>, said on Monday. “When government understands its purpose as serving the very working people that it has left behind, time and again, it can make a difference in the most pressing struggles facing our city today.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a time of rising food prices<\/a>, should other governments across the U.S. consider following in Mamdani\u2019s footsteps? Or are publicly owned grocery stores incompatible with American capitalism?<\/p>\n

Sticker shock at the supermarket is nothing new; it was one of voters\u2019 biggest gripes during the 2024 presidential campaign and the pandemic period that preceded it. Yet, the latest spikes \u2014 driven largely by energy costs tied to the Iran war<\/a> and President Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a> \u2014 have been especially pronounced.<\/p>\n

Government data released last week<\/a> showed that U.S. grocery prices shot up faster in April than in any month in nearly four years. Today, seafood costs 6.2% more than it did a year ago. Fresh vegetables cost 11.5% more. Beef costs 14.8% more. Coffee costs 18.5% more. Tomatoes cost 39% more. And those hikes are on top of pandemic-era inflation that had already pushed up food prices by roughly 25%.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Mamdani\u2019s city-owned grocery stores will work \u2014 and some pros and cons on whether the idea could ever be feasible beyond New York.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s plan<\/p>\n

In theory, the mayor\u2019s plan is pretty simple: use municipal resources to lower overhead and operating costs for grocery stores, then pass those savings on to consumers in the form of lower prices.<\/p>\n

In practice, here\u2019s what that means \u2014 at least so far.<\/p>\n

One 20,000-square-foot grocery store is scheduled to open in 2027 at the Peninsula<\/a>, a new live-work campus in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx, developed in part by the city\u2019s Economic Development Corporation and built on the site of a former juvenile detention facility.<\/p>\n

A second store will open in 2029 at La Marqueta, a city-owned marketplace under elevated train tracks in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of East Harlem in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Locations in the other three boroughs \u2014 Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island \u2014 are currently being vetted.<\/p>\n

The goal with all five grocery stores, according to Mamdani\u2019s office, is to \u201cprioritiz[e] City-owned sites wherever possible.\u201d Why? So his administration can waive rent and real estate taxes, slashing a major expense.<\/p>\n

The city would also pay to build and outfit the stores. To that end, Mamdani has so far requested $70 million in capital dollars<\/a> \u2014 a request the City Council still needs to approve. (The East Harlem outpost would cost roughly $30 million to get up and running, according to the mayor\u2019s office.) Mamdani has said<\/a> that the money for his public grocery stores could come, at least in part, from scaling back an existing program that offers tax breaks and special regulatory relief for private supermarkets that open in underserved areas (a.k.a. \u201cfood deserts\u201d).<\/p>\n

Beyond building the stores and letting them operate rent- and tax-free, the whole city-owned moniker becomes a bit misleading. The Mamdani administration doesn\u2019t plan to run these new stores. Instead, that job would go to private \u201cthird-party grocery operator(s)\u201d who will be selected \u201cthrough a competitive procurement process\u201d \u2014 then monitored to ensure they\u2019re keeping prices as low as possible.<\/p>\n

In the past, Mamdani has likened the idea to a \u201cpublic option\u201d for groceries rather than state-run \u2014 or in this case, city-run \u2014 supermarkets.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

People shop at a grocery store in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

(Spencer Platt\/Getty Images)Is this happening anywhere else?<\/p>\n

Actually, it is. A few, scattered rural municipalities have tried opening their own grocery stores to fill the void after other local options closed. The town of Baldwin, Fla. \u2014 population: about 1,300 \u2014 purchased its shuttered market in 2019 and operated it like a public utility for about five years. A similar city-owned store has been thriving for more than a decade in St. Paul, Kan., a town of 600 residents.<\/p>\n

Big cities beyond New York have started to explore the idea as well.<\/p>\n

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, another progressive Democrat, commissioned a 105-page feasibility study that found city-owned grocery stores were \u201cnecessary, feasible and implementable\u201d \u2014 but his administration ultimately decided to concentrate on city-owned markets with multiple independent vendors instead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Madison, Wis., construction began in February<\/a> on a municipally backed grocery store located on the first floor of a mixed-use affordable housing building owned by the city. It\u2019s expected to open by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

In Atlanta, Democratic Mayor Andre Dickens partnered with chain Savi Provisions to open the city\u2019s first municipally subsidized market<\/a> in September, contributing $3.5 million of the project’s $5.4 million cost.<\/p>\n

And in Washington, D.C., two mayoral candidates \u2014 both Democrats \u2014 just debated the idea last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Will it work?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the question Mamdani\u2019s new \u201cnetwork\u201d of five city-owned grocery stores is designed to test. It\u2019s effectively the biggest public-grocery pilot program in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

For his part, the mayor has long insisted that his stores will be able to \u201cbuy and sell at wholesale prices,\u201d in part by \u201ccentraliz[ing] warehousing and distribution.\u201d His thinking is that the more the city scales up \u2014 the more stores it opens \u2014 the easier that process will get.<\/p>\n

A Yahoo\/YouGov poll conducted<\/a> last year found that 51% of Americans approved and 31% disapproved of creating \u201ca network of government-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low rather than making a profit\u201d \u2014 a +20-point margin.<\/p>\n

But critics have doubts.<\/p>\n

The most vociferous objections come from conservatives and Republicans, who tend to dismiss the concept of a city-owned grocery store as \u201cFULL DERANGED MARXIST<\/a>\u201d while conjuring bleak images of Soviet-era breadlines. \u201cThe most terrifying words in the English language are, \u2018I\u2019m Zohran Mamdani, & I\u2019m here to run your grocery store,\u2019\u201d GOP Rep. Young Kim of California wrote Tuesday on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some economists and small-business owners have also weighed in against Mamdani\u2019s plan \u2014 which, again, calls for private contractors to actually run the stores. They argue<\/a> that city-owned grocery stores could undercut mom-and-pop businesses, forcing many to shutter. They also claim the approach is economically inefficient. Profit margins in the grocery business already are notoriously low, they say \u2014 just 1% to 3% \u2014 and the whole system depends on an intricate infrastructure<\/a> of cooperative distributors, volume discounts and branded promotions that may be difficult to replicate in a public, nonprofit network.<\/p>\n

For now, Mamdani\u2019s response is to say, essentially, that city-owned grocery stores are worth a try.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just that government can help,\u201d the mayor said on Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s that government must help. And our government will help.\u201d<\/p>\n