New York City officials now admit that Mayor Zohran Mamdani's flagship government-run grocery stores will lack staples like butcher counters and hot food, raising fresh doubts about a $70 million taxpayer-funded experiment critics say is destined to disappoint.
At an Economic Development Corporation board meeting Thursday, interim EDC CEO Jeanny Pak conceded that the planned city-owned markets will fall short of what most New Yorkers expect from a neighborhood grocery store. The stores won't include hot food counters. They won't have butchers. And the inventory will be limited to a curated selection rather than the full range shoppers find at a typical supermarket.
Pak tried to soften the admission. She told board members, as the New York Post reported, that officials had done their homework on what customers actually buy:
"It may not have all the items, but it's going to be like a typical [grocery store]. We did a lot of analysis of what people buy in terms of their everyday goods."
That assurance landed flat with at least one member of the EDC's own board. Adam Friedman, an urban planner, pressed Pak on what the city had done to protect existing private grocers from government-subsidized competition.
Friedman's question at the meeting cut to the core tension in the mayor's plan: What happens to the small businesses already serving these neighborhoods when the city opens a taxpayer-backed competitor next door?
Friedman asked directly at the meeting: "What effort has been made to help other stores in general?" Whether he received a satisfactory answer is unclear from the available record.
After the meeting, Friedman told NY1 that competition was the concern weighing on multiple board members:
"That's the issue that I think a number of us were getting at, how is its impact on competition? All these businesses are trying to do right."
His worry is not hypothetical. Grocery store owners and workers in the targeted neighborhoods have already raised alarms about a government-run store undercutting their prices with public money. Bodegas, independent grocers, and small supermarkets operate on razor-thin margins. A city-subsidized rival, even one without a butcher counter, could push them under.
The Mamdani administration's allies have shown little sympathy for those concerns. Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the mayor's political home base, appeared on Fox News and was asked by host Martha MacCallum what would happen to a bodega owner if the government opened a big grocery store next door.
Gordillo's answer was blunt:
"If one publicly owned grocery store that brings prices down in the neighborhood is enough to put someone out of business, maybe they shouldn't have been in that business in the first place."
That line captures the ideological confidence behind the project, and the indifference to the immigrant families and small entrepreneurs who run many of the city's independent food markets. When the government competes with its own taxpayers using their own money, calling the losers unfit for business is not a defense. It is a confession.
Mamdani campaigned on a promise to open one city-owned grocery store in every borough. Nearly eight months into his tenure, only two of those five stores have finalized locations. The first is planned for The Peninsula, a development on the site of a former juvenile detention center in the Hunt's Point section of the South Bronx. It is not expected to open until at least 2027.
The second is a 9,000-square-foot space in La Marqueta, a marketplace in East Harlem. That store is not slated to open until 2029, three years from now. The remaining three boroughs still lack identified sites.
The price tag for all five stores is expected to run upwards of $70 million in taxpayer funds. For that sum, New Yorkers will get stores that explicitly will not carry everything a normal supermarket does, will not offer hot prepared food, and will not have a butcher on site.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani made sweeping promises about what government-run stores would deliver. He vowed to "use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table." He told voters directly:
"At our stores, eggs will be cheaper. Bread will be cheaper. Grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation."
The reality now taking shape at EDC board meetings looks considerably more modest. The stores will focus on a discounted "core basket of goods," with other items sold at market price. Pak made clear that even popular products won't automatically get discounts. She noted that the city won't discount soda, even if the data show heavy demand for it: "Even if there are a lot of people who buy soda, we're not discounting soda."
Mamdani announced this week that he is installing new leadership at the EDC. Anthony Shorris, described as a veteran civil servant, will take over as CEO. Former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan will chair the agency's board.
Khan's appointment has drawn attention given her record of aggressive regulatory action at the FTC. But new faces at the top do not change the fundamental problem: the city is spending tens of millions of dollars to build grocery stores that, by its own officials' admission, will offer less than what a private supermarket provides.
The EDC is a city-run nonprofit tasked with boosting economic growth and development. It is now running point on a project that could undermine the very private businesses it was designed to support. Friedman's question, what effort has been made to help existing stores?, remains unanswered in any public forum.
The Democratic Socialists who form Mamdani's base see the grocery stores as proof that government can outperform the private sector. But the project's own timeline and disclosures tell a different story. Two locations finalized out of five promised. A first opening still at least a year away. A second store three years out. No butcher. No hot food. A limited inventory. And a $70 million bill that taxpayers will cover whether the stores succeed or fail.
Social media reaction has been skeptical. One user on X wrote: "OMG, this is just destined to fail. Anyone with experience with a grocery store there? This is just such a bad idea." Another compared the concept to a Trader Joe's, a chain known for limited selection, but one that operates without a dime of public subsidy.
The gap between Mamdani's campaign rhetoric and the project now taking shape is difficult to ignore. He promised cheaper eggs and bread. His own EDC says the stores might not stock everything a regular supermarket carries. He promised to solve the grocery equation. His officials are still deciding which items make the cut, and which don't.
Mamdani has already developed a pattern of bold pledges that collide with practical limits. The grocery store initiative follows the same arc: a grand promise, a slow rollout, and incremental admissions that the product won't match the pitch.
For the bodega owners and independent grocers in the South Bronx and East Harlem, the stakes are not theoretical. These are real businesses, often family-run, serving communities that the mayor says are underserved. The city's answer is to spend $70 million building a competitor that won't even carry hot food, and to tell existing store owners, through allies like Gordillo, that if they can't survive the competition, they didn't belong in business anyway.
When the government uses taxpayer money to compete with taxpayers and then shrugs when the taxpayers lose, that is not public service. That is ideology with a price tag, and New Yorkers are the ones stuck paying it.
