An empty lot in East Harlem is full of opportunity for grocery operator Mark Goris, who’s interested in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s NYC Groceries program.<\/p>\n
“I’m glad that the mayor did address it because a lot of people are struggling, I mean, with these food prices, inflation,” he said.<\/p>\n
Goris was on a site tour at the proposed site on La Marqueta with city Economic Development Corporation officials, as part of the bidding process to run the stores<\/p>\n
Goris used to run a grocery store in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
“I think the people in this area would appreciate something like this,” he said.<\/p>\n
Still, Goris said he wouldn’t have wanted to compete with it when he ran his store in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
“It’s just going to bite out more of a market share, and stores are already struggling during this economic period,” he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under the program, private operators of city-owned stores will get free rent and tax dollars in order to sell staples at a 30% discount.<\/p>\n
Grocery and bodega groups oppose the effort, claiming the taxpayer-funded subsidy would undercut business for stores with single-digit profit margins.<\/p>\n
Waverly Neer, the lead official for NYC Groceries at EDC, said officials are considering grant money for existing grocers concerned about the competition.<\/p>\n
“We’re, as an agency, looking at a number of different complementary policies and programs, grants, incentives that can come alongside these grocery stores to support other local independent businesses that in the neighborhoods,” Neer told NY1.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, supermarket insiders on the tour told NY1 they\u2019re still unsure whether the numbers work out for them financially.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For instance, there will be no kitchen, deli or butcher on site, meaning pre-made food is shipped in rather than prepared as needed.<\/p>\n
“It kind of puts the cuffs on you as far as cutting costs,” Goris said.<\/p>\n
To build the location, the city will spend $30 million, likely making it the most expensive of the five NYC Grocery stores\u00a0\u2014 one in each borough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An empty lot in East Harlem is full of opportunity for grocery operator Mark Goris, who’s interested in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109,25,13408,9,24,12,56,63,65,64,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-325426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-dan-rivoli","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}