John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Food Emporium and Gristedes grocery store chains, has said that he would be willing to contribute to a government-run option in New York City. The concept of a city-run grocery store chain is one of the tentpole policies of Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist State Assemblymember on the Democratic primary ballot for mayor on June 24th.
According to the New York Post, Catsimatidis said that he will donate a store for Mamdani’s project if he wins the election, but under one condition: “if they want to try an experiment, I will be helpful – as long as the city makes up the shortfall for shoplifting.” Catsimatidis was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign last year, and has already said that he will not be voting for Mamdani in the mayoral election, but the grocery store magnate insisted that his offer was sincere: “it could help the city feed the hungry. There’s a deal to be made. We’ll help make it happen.”
Zohran Mamdani wants to open a chain of city-owned grocery stores focused on lowering prices rather than turning a profit. “Without having to pay rent or property taxes, they will reduce overhead and pass on savings to shoppers,” he claims on his campaign website. Mamdani promises to work with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing, and to sell at wholesale prices.
With grocery prices at around 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels, and 25% of New Yorkers now living in poverty (roughly two million people), Mamdani’s pitch is certain to resonate with voters. His plan is bound to run into challenges, however. The idea has been proposed in areas left without grocery stores in other parts of the country, with mixed results. A town-owned grocery store opened in Baldwin, Florida in 2019, only to close last year, unable to compete with the rock-bottom prices from national chains like Walmart and Kroger. Another in Erie, Kansas, has leased out its store to a private company, which will take over operations and management while the city maintains ownership.
Still, the problem of food deserts in New York City is different than the same issue in rural Florida and Kansas. The main issue in those states is pushing back against depopulation, maintaining the grocery store as a vital institution that could support the local community and hopefully attract more people – problems which large cities don’t face. Another issue is that opening a single store, as these small towns did, left them at a competitive disadvantage with larger chains in negotiating prices with suppliers, but Mamdani’s proposal for a chain of stores across the city could help lower those costs. There is a law on the books that forces pricing parity from suppliers to large chains and smaller stores, after the chain A&P used its sheer volume to bully suppliers into giving it discounts or risk losing its business back in the 1930s (Amazon employs this strategy today in a number of other sectors). There has been a decades-long lapse in enforcement, however, contributing to the continued consolidation of supermarket companies, and the store closures that come with them.
A feasibility study commissioned by the city of Chicago last year found that a public grocery store for its under-served South and West Side neighborhoods was “necessary, feasible, and implementable,” although the city has now shifted away from that plan towards a city-owned market. Another study done by Vanderbilt University in 2024 found that while “there is no one-size-fits-all model,” government-owned grocery stores “represent a workable way to address growing food insecurity in the United States.”
