New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is keeping a campaign pledge to open government-owned-and-operated grocery stores to help the food affordability crisis. His Economic Development Corporation (EDC) says the five planned locations might not be as complete as the major chains, lacking hot food counters or butchers, but prices on many popular items will be 30 percent lower than elsewhere.
“It may not have all the items, but it’s going to be like a typical grocery store,” insisted Jeanny Pak, interim CEO of the EDC. Whatever that means.
Fulfilling this Mamdani campaign promise will cost taxpayers $70 million just to open the doors, and after that, who knows? If they’re undercutting other stores by 30 percent, there may not be any profits to fund future operations. Grocery stores operate at paper-thin profit margins to begin with, and if Mamdani Grocery Inc. isn’t going to feature the hot-button stations that rake in the bucks, it’s going to fulfill Margaret Thatcher’s comment about socialism, “Pretty soon you run out of other people’s money.”
Hizzoner has that all figured out too. He’s already raising taxes on people who own secondary homes known as Pied-à-Terres, hoping to haul in another $500 million annually.
By the time Mamdani unseats Senator Chuck Schumer in the Senate in 2028, the grocery fiasco will become someone else’s nightmare, if the stores haven’t already shuttered by then.
