Andrew Cuomo has conceded defeat to 33-year-old progressive upstart Zohran Mamdani in New York Metropolis’s Democratic mayoral main. With registered Democrats making up over two-thirds of town’s voters, Mamdani is in pole place to be the Massive Apple’s subsequent mayor, which may spell bother for New Yorkers combating town’s nation-leading price of dwelling.
The marketing campaign web site of Mamdani, who self-identifies as a democratic socialist, says that he’s operating “to decrease the price of dwelling for working class New Yorkers.” Along with providing free bus fare citywide, Mamdani is proposing to rein in “uncontrolled” costs with “a community of city-owned grocery shops centered on preserving costs low, not making a revenue.” Mamdani argues that “with out having to pay lease or property taxes, they are going to scale back overhead and cross on financial savings to consumers.”
If reducing the worth of groceries is Mamdani’s aim, his “public possibility” is a poor method to accomplish this feat, particularly given the construction of town’s grocery market.
The grocery market, which incorporates bodegas, grocery shops, supermarkets, and on-line grocery supply (like Amazon, Walmart, and ShopRite), is extremely aggressive in New York Metropolis, and its market focus is extraordinarily low. Based mostly on 2016 market share knowledge (the latest yr knowledge can be found) from Chain Retailer Information, a supplier of retail and foodservice intelligence, the New York metropolitan space’s grocery market has a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index rating, a measure of market competitiveness, of roughly 550 (an index rating under 1500 is taken into account to be aggressive).
Regardless of the aggressive market, meals costs in New York Metropolis (and the remainder of the nation) have risen. The price of meals at house, a very good proxy for the worth of groceries, elevated by 27.5 p.c between FY 2019 and FY 2023 within the New York Metropolis Metropolitan Space, based on an April 2025 report from the Workplace of the New York State Comptroller utilizing Bureau of Labor Statistics knowledge. Nonetheless, this value improve was not attributable to town’s 1,002 grocery shops centered on “making a revenue”—grocery retailer income vary from 1 p.c to 2 p.c, Adam Lehodey explains for Metropolis Journal—however by inflation attributable to federal spending and provide chain crunches.
It is also price noting that the federal government already performs a task within the meals system by offering subsidies for low-income New Yorkers. The Mayor’s Workplace of Meals Coverage experiences that $4.9 billion {dollars} have been spent on the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program (SNAP) in FY 2024 alone. New York State acquired a further $503.4 million in federal funding for the Particular Supplemental Dietary Program for Ladies, Infants, and Kids (WIC) in FY 2024, which served over 230,000 girls, infants, and kids in New York Metropolis.
Mamdani objects that “personal grocery retailer operators…are not even required to take SNAP/WIC,” however one hundred pc and 82 p.c of sampled grocery shops accepted SNAP and WIC, respectively, based on a 2016 examine carried out by the New York Metropolis Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene. The identical examine discovered that 87 p.c of bodegas accepted SNAP—93 p.c of which provided recent produce, laying waste to claims of healthy-food deserts.
Historical past exhibits that authorities possession of meals manufacturing and distribution can produce catastrophic outcomes. Daniel Di Martino, fellow on the Manhattan Institute, tells Cause about his first-hand expertise with government-owned grocery shops, whereas rising up in Venezuela, saying they “have been topic to in depth corruption by authorities officers that awarded contracts to mates, they bought rotten or low high quality meals, and so they served as a method to make voters depending on the federal government and drive them to vote for the socialist leaders.”
Even if you happen to think about corruption away, the vanity that New York Metropolis bureaucrats can run grocery shops at a decrease price than extremely capitalized personal corporations having fun with huge economies of scale, a long time of market expertise, and sophisticated provide chains is farcical.
