{"id":5320,"date":"2026-07-25T10:38:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T10:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5320"},"modified":"2026-07-25T10:38:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T10:38:48","slug":"mamdani-officials-admit-nyc-owned-markets-wont-have-features-like-butchers-hot-food-as-critics-rail-plan-is-destined-for-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5320","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani officials admit NYC-owned markets won’t have features like butchers, hot food \u2014 as critics rail plan is ‘destined for failure’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Economic Development Corporation admitted this week that his city-owned grocery stores \u201cmight not have all the items\u201d you\u2019d find in a typical supermarket.<\/p>\n

Read more LeBron James\u2019 76ers decision puts Knicks on a complicated path to an NBA Finals repeat<\/a><\/p>\n

The five stores \u2014 which are expected to cost taxpayers upwards of $70 million \u2014 will likely not include hot food counters or butchers, EDC officials revealed during a board meeting Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not have all the items, but it\u2019s going to be like a typical grocery store,\u201d insisted Jeanny Pak, interim CEO of the EDC, the powerful city-run nonprofit tasked with boosting economic growth and development.<\/p>\n

Pak also echoed Mamdani\u2019s assertion that only certain items in the stores would be discounted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a lot of analysis of what people buy in terms of their everyday goods,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cEven if there are a lot of people who buy soda, we\u2019re not discounting soda.\u201d <\/p>\n

The head-scratching statements around what exactly the city-owned stores would offer led some social media users to poke fun at the seemingly convoluted project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOMG, this is just destined to fail,\u201d said one user on X. \u201cAnyone with experience with a grocery store there? This is just such a bad idea.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another X user likened the concept to another popular grocery store chain. \u201cThis is a Trader Joe\u2019s, basically,\u201d they wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the campaign trail, Mamdani had vowed to open one city-owned grocery store in each borough, claiming that he would \u201cuse the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt our\u00a0stores, eggs will be cheaper. Bread will be cheaper.\u00a0Grocery\u00a0shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation,\u201d\u00a0he also claimed.<\/p>\n

But nearly eight months into his tenure, only two out of his five promised supermarkets have specific locations finalized, and the first one won\u2019t open till at least 2027.<\/p>\n

Read more Breaking down Knicks, 76ers rosters after LeBron James\u2019 decision<\/a><\/p>\n

Grocery store owners and workers have sounded the alarm on the pricey project \u2014 expressing concern that the discounted goods may hurt privately owned markets near the city-owned shops.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat effort has been made to help other stores in general?\u201d asked Adam Friedman, an urban planner and EDC board member, asked during Thursday\u2019s meeting, according to NY1.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the issue that I think a number of us were getting at \u2014 how is its impact on competition? All these businesses are trying to do right,\u201d he told the outlet after.<\/p>\n

A co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s New York City chapter \u2014 Mamdani\u2019s political home \u2014 was pressed on those concerns during a Fox News interview last week, but brushed them off.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the government opened a big grocery store next to your bodega, what would you do?\u201d host Martha MacCallum asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one publicly owned grocery store that brings prices down in the neighborhood is enough to put someone out of business \u2014 maybe they shouldn\u2019t have been in that business in the first place,\u201d NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo replied.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Mamdani has previously said the shops will focus on selling a discounted core basket of goods, but will contain a myriad of other items sold at market price.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This week, he announced he was appointing veteran civil servant Anthony Shorris as the new CEO of the EDC, which is running point on the grocery store project. Former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan will step in to chair the government agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first store is slated to open in the South Bronx neighborhood of Hunt\u2019s Point at The Peninsula \u2013 a former Juvenile Detention Center in 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Manhattan-based shop is set to open in 2029 at a 9,000-square-foot space in La Marqueta \u2013 a marketplace running in East Harlem.<\/p>\n

Read more Why it\u2019s championship or bust for LeBron James\u2019 final act with 76ers<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The five stores — which are expected to cost taxpayers upwards of $70 million — will likely not include hot food counters or butchers, EDC officials revealed during a board meeting Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-metro"],"yoast_head":"\nMamdani officials admit NYC-owned markets won't have features like butchers, hot food \u2014 as critics rail plan is 'destined for failure' - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5320\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mamdani officials admit NYC-owned markets won't have features like butchers, hot food \u2014 as critics rail plan is 'destined for failure' - 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