{"id":342335,"date":"2026-09-10T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342335\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T00:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T00:00:10","slug":"grocers-file-antitrust-suit-to-block-mamdami-admins-plan-for-nyc-owned-supermarkets-predatory-pricing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342335\/","title":{"rendered":"Grocers file antitrust suit to block Mamdami admin’s plan for NYC-owned supermarkets: ‘Predatory pricing’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grocers filed a federal antitrust lawsuit<\/a> to block the Mamdani administration\u2019s plan to push forward with city-owned supermarkets \u2014 claiming the proposal would create unfair competition for nearby grocery stores and bodegas.<\/p>\n

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the US Southern District of New York, the National Supermarket Association asked a judge to delay a city bidding process that seeks an operator for the municipal stores so it can rule on whether the program violates antitrust laws.<\/p>\n

Bids to operate the stores are due on Oct. 16, but the complaint asks the court to first make its ruling, with any new bidding deadline to be set 30 days afterwards. Absent that court-ordered process, plaintiffs warned that any winning bidder could later be sued if the court rules against city\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani touts the city-owned grocery store program as essential to making NYC more affordable. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n

The suit accuses New York City of \u201cusing its own properties to eliminate occupancy costs, immunizing the enterprise from taxes, and then undercutting nearby private businesses through a permanent discount pegged to their competitors\u2019 prices,\u201d according to court papers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a good grocery store here today,\u201d said Jerry Nunez, owner of City Fresh Market at 125 E. 116th St., one of the plaintiffs in the federal suit who came forward for the first time on Wednesday. \u201cOur customers support it, and 50 people have jobs because of it. Why should the city put all of that at risk?\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the mayor insisted that the program will move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mamdani administration designed the NYC Groceries initiative to ensure that the stores we open serve the communities where they are located,\u201d the spokesperson said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cBy the end of the mayor\u2019s first term, every borough will have a high-quality, affordable grocery store that New Yorkers can count on. We remain confident in both the legality and the necessity of NYC Groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mexican green limes are sold at the C-town Supermarket in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Friday, April 18, 2014. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

The complaint was filed on behalf of the NSA and two grocers in Harlem and the Bronx by attorneys at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative nonprofit chaired by Larry Kudlow<\/a>, President Trump\u2019s former top economic advisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to keep this procurement event from happening, where the city is running a competition among private companies that will run the facilities,\u201d said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the plaintiffs succeed in getting an injunction, they have delayed the rollout of the program and that\u2019s an advantage to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second plaintiff is Rafael Nunez, who owns C-Town Supermarket at 809 Southern Blvd in the Bronx \u2013 or about a 10 minute walk from the municipal store planned in the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in Hunts Point.<\/p>\n

Rafael Nunez (pink shirt), who owns a C-Town Supermarket in the Bronx, spoke at a press conference announcing the federal antitrust lawsuit against the city. Lisa Fickenscher\/NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pay high rent, taxes, insurance and energy costs,\u201d Nunez said of his Bronx store, which opened 42 years ago when the neighborhood was known as \u201cFort Apache\u201d after the Paul Newman movie about a crime ridden precinct.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were here when this neighborhood was struggling,\u201d Nunez said. \u201cNow that the neighborhood has come back, I don\u2019t think the city should use taxpayer money to make it harder for the businesses that helped it get here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first municipal store is scheduled to open next year in the Bronx. The Harlem store is slated to open in 2029, while opening dates for the stores in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island have not been disclosed yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The central claim of the lawsuit is that the city\u2019s plan to offer a 30% discount on basic items at the municipal stores amounts to \u201cpredatory pricing.\u201d If a private grocer lowered its pricing to compete with the city-owned stores, there\u2019s nothing stopping the municipal stores from lowering their prices further, the grocers argue.<\/p>\n

La Marqueta food marketplace in East Harlem is one of the locations where a city-owned supermarket will be built. Christopher Sadowski for NY Post<\/p>\n

The subsidized stores have the ability to continuously undercut competitors because they would not be expected to pay rent or taxes, giving them an unfair advantage, according to the suit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they want protection against the antitrust claims they have to show that the state authorized this program, and thus far we don\u2019t know,\u201d Kovacic said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m guessing that we will hear something about that in short order from the mayor\u2019s office. The mayor\u2019s office will likely issue a statement showing the state gave them the authority to do this, but if Albany did not sign a statute authoririzng the program, then the city has a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, another group representing immigrant-owned grocers \u2013 the Multicultural Business Coalition \u2013 sued the city <\/a>in state court over the grocery store program alleging that its discriminatory.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grocers filed a federal antitrust lawsuit to block the Mamdani administration\u2019s plan to push forward with city-owned supermarkets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,288,6808,128397,2850,57,9,24,63,1211,9936,129,131,130,82],"class_list":["post-342335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-business","tag-east-harlem","tag-larry-kudlow","tag-lawsuits","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-socialism","tag-supermarkets","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342335","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=342335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}