City May Pay Private Grocers Not to Compete with Mamdani’s Soviet-Style Grocery Stores in New York
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is preparing to open five municipal Soviet style grocery stores that will sell produce, meat, and pantry staples at a mandated 30% discount, funded by taxpayers through free rent, no property taxes, and operating subsidies, while simultaneously exploring grants and incentives to prop up the private grocers those stores will compete against.
Waverly Neer, the Economic Development Corporation’s lead official for Mamdani’s N.Y.C. Groceries program, told NY1 on Sunday that the agency is examining “a number of different complementary policies and programs, grants, incentives that can come alongside these grocery stores to support other local independent businesses” in the neighborhoods.
The five city-owned stores, one per borough and set to open by 2029, will be run by selected private operators, with the city covering major costs so prices stay locked lower than market rates.
Councilwoman Vickie Paladino called the policy “absurd.”
Paladino said that the administration is :breaking the market with subsidized groceries, and in order to keep the local grocery stores from collapsing they’re going to distribute ‘grants’ to keep them afloat.”
She said that this makes stores “completely dependent on government handouts to remain open also.”
“Handouts which can be revoked, of course, should they step out of line in some way. It’s all just a big scheme for control over everything,” she added.
Mamdani, 33, born to wealthy, influential parents of Indian descent in Kampala, Uganda, lives in a rent-controlled apartment, describes himself as a “democratic socialist,” and is pushing policies including: free bus travel, universal childcare, a freeze on rent hikes for 1 million apartment and a pilot scheme for city-run grocery stores.
Every command-economy grocery scheme in history has driven headlong into a brick wall, but maybe will the Mayor succeed this time?