NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Unveils Plans for City-Owned Grocery Store
The East Harlem store will cost $30 million to open, taking a chunk of the $70 million budget planned for the five stores.
Communists going to commie.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced plans for the first of five planned city-owned grocery stores in East Harlem, “in La Marqueta – a marketplace under the train tracks running over Park Avenue.”
The best part of it is:
Yeltsin literally believed that the grocery shopping was staged by the CIA.
The man couldn't fathom that a regular grocery store in the U.S. would be superior to the Politburo's stores in the USSR. https://t.co/2iFPdDQ9bZ
— Students For Liberty (@sfliberty) September 18, 2023
People waiting in line for bread in the USSR. This is what communism really looks like. pic.twitter.com/4RBI02DzuN
— Mike LaChance (@MikeLaChance33) June 7, 2024
It’s all about fairness:
La Marqueta is already owned by the city, and the store is expected to operate without rent.
The store will also be built on part of La Marqueta that is sitting empty, Mamdani explained.
Hizzoner said he’d build “stores where prices are fair, where workers are treated with dignity, and where New Yorkers can actually afford to shop at our stores.”
“Eggs will be cheaper, bread will be cheaper, grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation,” he added.
“Now, some will insist that city-owned businesses do not work, the government cannot keep up with corporations,” Mamdani added. “My answer to them is simple. I look forward to the competition.”
Did you catch that last word? As a libertarian, I laughed. Competition!
And, yes, Mamdani wants five stores to open by the end of his term in 2029.
The East Harlem store will cost $30 million to open.
The five-store plan has a $70 million budget, yet one store costs $30 million.
That leaves New York City with $40 million for the other four planned stores. How will the city use only $10 million for them?
How do I math?! Sheesh.
I imagine the budget for each store includes salaries for the workers. Mamdani said the stores would treat workers with dignity. How much do they expect to receive?
New York City’s minimum wage is $17.00 per hour.
Then again, if everything is free, I doubt you need many people manning the store.
What about the quality of food? If the store costs $30 million to open, assuming it includes salaries for the workers, how much is left over for food and other items? I highly doubt the store would include high-quality products or even an abundance of them.
Also, do you think only poor people will shop at these free grocery stores? I highly doubt it.
“These stores are going to get jam packed, they’re only four or five in the entire city of 8 million people,” said Fernando Mateo with United Bodegas of America, according to ABC 7 NY. “What do you expect is going to happen? You’re going to have people rushing to these stores early in the morning to late at night, waiting on long lines. You know, it’s going to be more turmoil than anything else. It’s a great punch line for him and for the socialist movement. But New York is not a socialist city.”
Oh, honey. New York City is a socialist city.
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I look forward to everything being stolen down to the wall studs and probably those as well.
After a certain point, they’re not likely to get far, stealing studs. I’m betting none of them know what the phrase “load-bearing wall” means.
FAFO hopefully.
I bet they know what “stripping cable ” means
If some sort of market already exists at the location why is it going to cost $30m to open the new store?
I asked an AI chatbot and it referred to this article:
https://retailerspos.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-open-a-grocery-store
Bottom line from the article, “If you want to open a supermarket, you will need about $3 to $3.5 million.”
Yes, the price tag doesn’t make any sense. Another man who owns a chain of stores in NYC said it costs less than half of that to open a store. I will reserve judgement on just how cheap the groceries will be with all that union labor considering it will still cost the same to transport the food there. Mamdani said when running the stores were going to be free, now he is saying low cost. Which is it and will everyone be able to shop there regardless of income? Will you need to show picture ID and a welfare card? Will it only take SNAP? If it is free it will be stripped in a few hours.
No, he did not. Where on earth are you getting this garbage that you’ve been posting today?
It’s the buses Mamdani promised would be free. The groceries would be wholesale.
And he didn’t promise the buses would be free, because that’s not in his control. He promised to advocate to the MTA for it to make the buses free, which he has done. So far the MTA’s answer has been “no”, but he’s still got three years in which to keep advocating it.
As it is, from my own observation it appears that at least half the passengers on a bus don’t pay. Many of them get on in the back, especially if the bus is crowded.
City-owned?
Oh, you don’t understand socialism adequately brother. It needs to be not owned by anyone.. See, ownership of property is one of the evils of capitalism and it must be entirely abolished. It must be from each according to his ability – so volunteer workers, volunteer suppliers, volunteered buildings.
Otherwise you’re just perpetuating the oppression, baby.
Government owned implies communism not socialism. If it was socialist the government would just dictate wages and prices and locations and everything else.
Mamdani calls himself a socialist.
And he never lies.
You have it exactly backwards. Socialism is DEFINED as government ownership. Doesn’t anybody know how to use a dictionary any more?
Yes, socialism means public ownership of the means of production. See The Road to Serfdom.
Eggs will be cheaper, bread will be cheaper
And, if I may, just a quick question yer honor…?
How you gonna do that?
It’s a sign of his idiocy (or propaganda) that he thinks you can force down the prices without considering the costs. If you want cheaper eggs, there’s a whole long line of costs you have to work down to actually reduce said price. Unless he’s just going to steal the eggs (like commies are, eventually, wont to do) from the farmer, he isn’t really lowering costs. (Oh, well, he is going to lower the building costs… by owning the building.)
(Does anyone know of a place with a sample balance sheet of, say, a small grocer? How much goes to how many employees, how much they pay for their produce, etc.? Maybe I should ask an Aldi manager around here….)
Depends on how communists define “cheaper.” The real cost will not be “cheaper.” It will in fact be far more expensive than retail outlets as far as inventory costs are calculated. To call it a wealth transfer is far too generous a characterization of this shameless communist grift.
“And, if I may, just a quick question yer honor…?
How you gonna do that?”
Price controls!
When you poke a communist balloon on one side, it NEVER bulges anywhere else!
Let me at this store. I will go in at forty light, pick up everything I can fit in the cart, basket, buggy, or whatever they are called and take it.
But I won’t make it to the door. Because I will not leave anything for anyone else. Which will require the politburo member to stop me and ration what so can take out the door.
One load of bread, half a dozen eggs, one can of beans, and any other limitation based on my family size and my income.
Rationing.
Get it New York? It’s COMMUNISM!!
You won’t get a choice of bananas. You get A banana. Old, brown, over ripe, and mushy. No fresh ones will be brought out, because the spoiled one will need to go first.
Another problem is that it won’t specifically benefit low income people. Anyone can shop at the city-owned grocery stores. There will be no income checks or restrictive eligibility requirements to enter or make purchases.
The profit margin of a small grocery store is between 1% and 3%. That’s for a large store.
No rent costs, no electricity costs, no labor costs, and maybe there may be money that can be applied to the build of the other four stores.
I was trying to figure out who pays the employees. It sounds like the city will contract that to an operator, pay them, and they pay the employees?? So the salary money would come from taxpayers, and not the store. What could go wrong?
TY Mary, pass the popcorn, please.
The costs will be lower, because this store won’t have to pay rent, interest, taxes, or make a profit.
Don’t drink anymore of the coolaid!
What Kool-Aid. If this store sold it it would likely be cheaper, because the store’s costs would be, but more likely it wouldn’t carry Kool-Aid because it’s unhealthy. Which would be another reason it would lose genuine customers and remain a haven for shoplifters.
He is saying there will be no rent paid. I’m sure there will also be a cut on power. I think the forced union wages will make up for some of that but it will be interesting to see the comparison prices. Other stores in the area are warning they will lose business and have to raise prices or close down. If they close then Mamdani’s fantasy crashes which it will then there will be no grocery stores.
If you think about it, this is precisely what “free” government schools did to American education. Though thankfully it didn’t kill the competition ENTIRELY.
$17 an hour? Uh no. Just the beginning. We need to add the union grift premium to that, just for starters.
You had better raise your own chickens, make your own bread, grow your own well pretty much everything. The grocery business is a very low margin business.
Umm. Why does it cost $30 million to open? The city apparently already owns the land. Does it really cost that much to build a grocery store in NYC? Or am I missing something?
They aren’t doing much building, either. There’s already a building (that is, maybe, NYC’s version of a farmers’ market?) with “empty space” in it to utilize.
“..a marketplace under the train tracks…”
What a coincidence! That’s where you find all the train wrecks, which this certainly will be.
A grocery system requires a 10-year strategy, but a mayor is looking at a 4-year term. Without a permanent, non-political funding and a legal structure, a city owned grocery store will likely be dismantled or radically changed every time the keys to City Hall changes hands.
The military runs grocery stores called, “The Commissary” which are probably what Mandami has in mind as his model. It’s been decades since I’ve been in one, but their pricing system is roughly cost-of-goods-plus-five-percent. Their aim is to provide food savings of over 25% compared to civilian marketplaces. Their advantage is that they purchase their goods free of both federal and state taxes. They also have some volume-generated purchasing power as there are roughly 230 stores in the system.. As for their operational costs …”appropriated funds may be used to cover employee salaries and wages, utilities, communications, operating supplies and services, food shipments to overseas destinations, and other management, equipment, and/or information technology costs.
This system costs tax payers roughly $1.5 billion annually.
I would be impressed if Mandami can replicate system in his backyard so to speak. Good luck to him though. Here’s one small detail about location that might help him: each store is in a compound that is heavily fenced and the stores literally surrounded by soldiers.
Also, in military commissaries, baggers are not employees. They work exclusively for customer tips. Nobody in NYC is going to tip baggers.
Sure they will tip … they will have so much money left over from their savings on groceries!!! Bwahahahaha!
There’s only so many slivers you can scissor out of an EBT card.
There’s a big difference. Base stores, food or otherwise, are great. I have fond memories. I doubt anyone fondly remembers the old USSR stores. And I think they’re looking forward to the end of the Cuban variant.
Yes. I think Mandami has heard how great the Commissary system is, and thinks it’ll be easy to replicate, but as you point out – it’s going to be a disaster.
My nearest grocery operates similarly. It’s cost plus 10%. Selection is narrower than competitors but the cheaper prices across the board are real. The employees are on salary and get performance bonus/revenue share …but they ain’t making $17 an hour in rural South Alabama. Of course the cashiers are also doing the bagging and everyone in the store but the butcher is stocking shelves, picking up carts from parking lot and doing the cleaning.
Plus, their clientele is strictly limited to active duty and retired military, plus a few others, not the general populace. ID is required.
It doesn’t cost $30M to open a grocery store, so assume $1/2M for the store leaves $29.5M for goods and produce to walk out the doors.
Communism is always going to be a train wreck, no other way it will end.
But will be fun to watch from out of state.
“$29.5M for goods and produce to walk out the doors.”
Concerning goods and produce walking out the doors— the amount of theft in a city owned store will be out of this world.
Cheaper, sure. The problem is availability. How much is the city of New York willing to sink into this thing that’s going to accomplish nothing other than losing money even if there’s no theft. Which there will be
There’s a difference between cheap and inexpensive.
Cheap groceries? Do they really want cheap groceries? As AF_Chief_Master_Sgt illustrated, the brown banana will probably be cheap but do you really want it?
.
Mandami is going to be the chief “brown banana” producer. The only way this idea will work is if the people of NYC are willing to eat his crap. He calls it cheap groceries. People with good sense just call it gross.
Prediction: the prices will be so low that everyone in NYC will become rich from their savings. Thus NYC will have an economic boom and people from around the country will flood in to take part. NYC will become the growth capital of the world! I was a fellow student of AOC at BU and our economics prof taught us this.
I wish to subscribe to your newsletter! I will soon have some money coming from a Nigerian Prince and I am looking to someone to help me invest it!
I got Durak, but what does Kazyol mean?
I believe Kazyol (Казёл) means “goat”.
You’ll get bare shelves or long lines, if you don’t let price do the rationing.
Price is what normally does rationing. You can buy all you want at all times.
The first thing they will do is hide the books. A lesson in economics forthcoming.
Trader Zo’s
If this store doesn’t have to pay rent, and it doesn’t have to pay interest on the initial capital investment, and it will probably also be exempt from taxes, nor does it have to make a profit or even break even, then it may very well be competitive with its private enterprise rivals which do have to pay all those things.
The NYC subway used to be made up of several competing privately-owned lines, but the city built its own line and drove them all out of business, because of course its own line was exempt from many of the expenses that the others had to pay.
Wait a second, where did “free” come from? It’s never been suggested that these stores would be free, just cheaper than the private ones. Which may happen, at least at first, because of the subsidies I mentioned earlier.
But you know who else will flock to this store? Shoplifters, that’s who. And with Mamdani and Bragg in charge they’ll get away with it so they’ll keep robbing the store blind. And without stock genuine customers will stop coming. And that’s how it will die.
Did you not see the video of the trial run government store in Manhattan? Employees galore!
Employees handed out the shopping bags, employees placed the items in the shopping bag for the “customer.” The clientele were allowed one filled shopping bag per person. No customer was allowed to fill his/her own bag. Did I mention the line to get inside? It went around the block.
That was not a government store, and it was not a trial run for anything. It had absolutely nothing to do with Mamdani or with any government. Pure private enterprise. I don’t understand why you think it is relevant here.
Mamdani never promised that his groceries would be free. Anyone who claims he did is lying.
It doesn’t even open until 2029; so likely a complete boondoggle like California rail. They will just keep de;laying and delaying the proejct and costs and spending will go up and up while the fight to have the wokest supermarket ever. Just say no to Sabra humus! In the meantime they could just make real competition happen like make it more affordable for businesses to operate in NYC like grocery stores and that would drive down the prices. And then you could use your outrageous 30 million dollars on something that would actually help people like policing.
No, it’s supposed to open next year. He says all five stores will be running by the end of 2029, which is when he expects to be running for reelection.
Of course that’s all in his fantasy.
No, it’s the very first one set to open in 2029, not all 5.
https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/news/nycs-first-city-owned-grocery-store-to-open-in-2029-as-mamdani-stresses-affordability/618915/
So honestly this idiot needs 3 years to open 1 store.
Retail Touch Points is wrong. I’ve never heard of it before, and based on this I would never trust anything it reports.
Mamdani’s own words: ““I am proud to announce that we will open every single one of these stores by the end of our first term, and the first one will open next year.”
For $70 million, any private sector grocery chain could open about 40 stores.
And, unlike these city owned stores, they’d still be open for business a year after they opened.
I hope the media cover the riots over the “free” food that take place on opening day. Should be epic.
What free food? There was never any promise of free food. Anyone who claims there was is lying.
1. Why are you so worried about this? You’ve said it multiple times on this thread.
2. You do realize you are totally ineffective because people don’t care what you say and keep saying it anyway, right?
3. What kind of free food do you think mamdani will hand out for free at the free food store? Fat free? Caffeine free? Gluten free? Or just free?
1. When someone writes something that’s outright false, I correct the record so no one else is misled by the falsehood. Because I care about the truth.
2. People who care to be informed and not misinformed pay attention to what I write. People who hate the truth and love telling lies ignore me at their peril.
3. What free food store? That’s the whole point. Mamdani never promised a free food store, and anyone who claims he did is lying. The food at this store (if it ever opens) will not be free and no one ever had any business expecting it to be free, in any sense.
Leave a Comment