New York is Hungry for a Big Grocery Experiment

Small towns have tried public grocery stores. How would they fare in a major city?

New York City—where takeout is a food group and ovens are for storing clothes—may soon get into the grocery business. If he wins the general election this November, Zohran Mamdani, the new Democratic nominee for mayor, has said he will build a network of municipally owned, affordable grocery stores, one in each of the city’s five boroughs.

According to Mamdani, the city could help pay for the stores’ rent and operating costs by taxing the wealthy, and the stores won’t seek to turn a profit, enabling them to sell food at wholesale cost. In the vision Mamdani laid out in a campaign video, the stores’ mission would be combatting “price gouging” by offering lower prices than corporate grocery stores.

To read more, please visit The Atlantic.