Mayor Mamdani was in front of the cameras this week touting his plan for five city-owned grocery stores.
At our five-borough municipal grocery stores, New Yorkers will get a 30% discount on eggs, milk, chicken, fresh produce and other everyday essentials.
In the wealthiest city in the richest country in the world, no one should have to wonder how they’ll afford the food they need… pic.twitter.com/zbNVS735bg
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 27, 2026
The thinking behind these stores is that the city stores can sell things cheaper because they don’t have to worry about rent or taxes.
These stores can offer prices at this level because they operate with a lower cost structure. Unlike bodegas, the city-run grocery stores will not pay rent or property taxes. Government-owned property is typically tax-exempt in the same way libraries, courthouses and DMVs do not pay property tax.
This foregone tax revenue creates an inherent cost advantage relative to other grocery providers. Still, the effect on the city’s bottom line is real: The city must make up forgone revenue elsewhere or absorbed it as a cost.
It’s a perfect socialist plan. The costs are completely hidden while the savings are evident to every shopper. It’s not an economic miracle so much as a magician’s trick. Another saving for the city stores is that the city is paying for the buildout.
The city is also covering construction and buildout costs via taxpayer dollars, meaning these stores will not face the same upfront capital costs as private competitors. And unlike other businesses that fail to generate profits and go bankrupt, any financial shortfalls from these stores will be absorbed by the city. This means New York City taxpayers will ultimately bear any losses.
Again, it’s perfect if you’re a know-nothing socialist mayor who wants an example of socialism working to point to when you run for reelection. No one thinks about the $70 million in taxpayer money being sunk into this when they are buying hamburger cheap.
Well, no one except the other business owners who are now forced to compete with a grocer who has no rent and pays no taxes. A group of business leaders in the city, i.e. people who can do math, are planning to sue.
As the far-left mayor announced new details of his plan this week — including a 30% discount on basic items like produce, meat, milk, cheese and bread – the Multicultural Business Coalition’s board voted to file a lawsuit in the coming weeks to block the pricey initiative, the group’s chairman Frank Garcia told The Post.
“The mayor doesn’t seem to want to sit down with us,” Garcia said, adding that Mamdani “won’t be able to bully these lawyers we are going to bring in.”…
The nonprofit MBC plans to raise $1 million to fight some of the mayor’s initiatives, Garcia said, adding that the suit “should be a non-partisan initiative.” The group plans to send a letter in the coming days notifying Mamdani’s office of its plans to take legal action…
“Having items that sell for 30% less than our prices, means nobody will go to our stores,” Radhames Rodriguez, president of the United Bodegas of America told The Post.
Assuming the lawsuit doesn’t shut this down, there are other obvious ways this is going to fail. An economist for the Manhattan Institute ran through a few of them.
My initial reaction to Mamdani’s “30% cheaper” government grocery stores. https://t.co/nJ4j3J1mI9 pic.twitter.com/0zgB69LVaZ
— Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) July 27, 2026
If one Ticketmaster sold everything at 30 percent off, what would happen? People would buy the discounted tickets and resell them for 10 percent off, keeping the 20 percent for themselves. The same could happen here. And that means that the store will either sell many times more discounted products than the average store or it will constantly be out of the discounted items. Those are the only two options.
In a real socialist state, damaging the capitalists would be the goal. In this case I don’t think Mamdani has really thought that far ahead. There are something like 5,500 grocery stores in New York City so having 5 that offer subsidized food isn’t going to destroy anything but it may make it tough for the handful of bodegas located nearby one of these stores.
And as the video suggests, ultimately no one will be held accountable no matter what happens. Empty shelves are a failure for a real grocer but not for this boondoggle. Mamdani will just point to the immense demand and claim we need more government grocery stores. The fact that New Yorkers are paying up front for these stores will never get mentioned in news stories touting his “success.” It really is a perfect socialist scam.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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