Zohran Mamdani just announced NYC's 1st city-owned grocery store. Could the idea help reverse rising food prices across

[Eugene]

Source: Yahoo! News

Zohran Mamdani just announced NYC's 1st city-owned grocery store. Could the idea help reverse rising food prices across the U.S.?

Or are government-backed supermarkets incompatible with American capitalism?

Andrew Romano, Reporter
Wed, May 20, 2026 at 3:52 PM EDT
6 min read

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced this week that the Big Apple’s first city-owned grocery store will open in the South Bronx sometime next year, delivering on a central promise of his dark-horse 2025 campaign — and pitching the project, which aims to put one public, nonprofit supermarket in each borough by the end of his first term, as “physical proof of our conviction that government can be a force for good.”

"We are going to use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table," Mamdani, a 34-year-old Democrat and democratic socialist, said on Monday. "When government understands its purpose as serving the very working people that it has left behind, time and again, it can make a difference in the most pressing struggles facing our city today.”

At a time of rising food prices, should other governments across the U.S. consider following in Mamdani’s footsteps? Or are publicly owned grocery stores incompatible with American capitalism?

Sticker shock at the supermarket is nothing new; it was one of voters’ biggest gripes during the 2024 presidential campaign and the pandemic period that preceded it. Yet, the latest spikes — driven largely by energy costs tied to the Iran war and President Trump’s tariffs — have been especially pronounced.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/article/zohran-mamdani-just-announced-nycs-1st-city-owned-grocery-store-could-the-idea-help-reverse-rising-food-prices-across-the-us-195221499.html

[SSJVegeta]

1. Not the first. LaGuardia built the first. Didnt he?

[TheProle]

2. Looking forward to seeing how the NYC stores perform

pretty meager margins in the grocery biz, but I applaud the attempt to shrink food deserts in the city.

If they can operate without constant infusions of taxpayer money and top-heavy bureaucracy, it could be a viable model for other big cities.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. John Catsimatidis is going to be yelling bloody murder.

He owns a bunch of high-end grocery stores in NYC, Gristedes.

And he also owns a big radio station/network in NYC, WABC.

He'll have all the hosts of his programs broadcasting that Mamdani has to go, or something like that.

Food Stamp dollars going to an NYC grocery store from his stores will put him into one hell of a fit.

[mr715]

7. "High End"

Want a moist slice of bread? Want some grey meat? Want a fruit that fell a few times?

[pecosbob]

4. Watch out for saboteurs...

They'd better have good security or those in opposition will try to make it fail.

[DBoon]

5. the grocery stores should buy direct from local farmers

and figure out a way to get affordable dry/canned/frozen foods

you need an entire supply chain of affordability

[surrealAmerican]

6. It won't do anything for "rising food prices across the U.S." ...

... but it will make a big difference for people in the neighborhoods where these stores are. This is local politics - there's nothing wrong with that.