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Bodega owners and workers on Monday sounded the alarm over Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to launch city-owned grocery stores — claiming it’ll put them out of business.
“Competing with the city having business is not going to be something that we can support,” Radhames Rodriguez, president of United Bodegas of America, said during a press conference outside a Gristedes supermarket in Midtown.
Rodriguez, 62, who owns four bodegas in the Bronx, said his stores and others won’t be able to compete with prices at the city-run stores — which would be exempt from paying rent or property taxes under Mamdani’s plan.
“Let’s say they sell a dozen eggs for $1 and the cost to us is $4 … that is going to destroy our business,” he said.
Miguel Valerio, 51, who owns two bodegas in the Bronx, said he worried for the welfare of his dozen employees — and pointed out government workers may not be suited to running a business like his.
“I don’t want to lose my job,” Valerio, a dad of two, told The Post.
“The government doesn’t want to do the same thing I do everyday. I wake up at 5:00, I go to sleep by 11:00 every day,” he added.
“What is going to happen to people running their business?” Valerio asked. “I have 12 people working for me, that’s what I care about.”
The pilot program is part of Mamdani’s “affordability” platform, aiming to provide New Yorkers with cheaper prices for food and other necessities to customers.
But merchants complained the government-run stores could undercut the prices of privately-run bodegas that are required to pay tax and rent or mortgages, siphoning off customers.
During a podcast interview Monday, Mamdani emphasized the program is a $60 million experiment — one city-owned grocer in each borough, or five total.
“If it isn’t effective at a pilot level it doesn’t deserve to be scaled up,” the Democratic Socialists of America candidate said on the “Plain English” podcast with Derek Thompson.
But bodega and grocery store owners and workers called it a rotten egg, Soviet-style plan that pits the government against small private sector merchants.
“It’s going to be a huge problem. You can’t force us to pay taxes and then be our adversary,” Rafael Garcia, owner of La Economica Meat Choice store on University Avenue in The Bronx, told The Post.
In some bodegas, about two-thirds of the business is from customers with government-financed food stamps and Garcia said there was no doubt those shoppers would flock to the lower-cost, city-run grocery stores.
Francisco Marte, the president of the Bodega and Business Association, said at Monday’s press conference: “Socialism hasn’t been successful anywhere in the world. Even China has turned to capitalism. Come on, this is stupid.”
Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis, who also spoke at the event at Second Avenue and East 40th Street said, “City-owned supermarkets don’t work. Cities do not know how to run a business.”
Progressive Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson had considered launching a municipal grocery store in the Windy City after a study concluded it was “not only feasible but necessary.”
But Johnson said he put the plan on hold after companies reached out and asked to join the venture, suggesting a public-private partnership to improve access in so-called food desserts or a public market instead.
Government-owned grocery stores have been tried in smaller towns in rural America that lost their last grocers — with mixed results at best.
A town-owned grocery store in 1,400-resident Baldwin, Fla. opened in 2019. The store operated at a loss and closed in March.
A city-owned store set up in Erie, Kan., didn’t attract enough customers and sales to break even and was forced to change its approach. To lower costs, it leased out the building to a private operator to be the grocer, while the city retained ownership, Governing Magazine reported.
Not every municipal grocery has gone belly up.
Another Kansas town, 600-person St. Paul, bought its own store in 2013 after the last supermarket closed and nearest grocer was 17 miles away.
The government-owned grocer is still operating there, a success story cited by Mamdani.
The Queens assemblyman, during the lengthy podcast interview, defended his own plan, noting that prices have skyrocketed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is a sticker shock that New Yorkers tell me about all the time,” he said. “And the most obvious examples here are eggs and milk and bread that have been cited again and again.”
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Mamdani — who will face off against Mayor Eric Adams and other candidates in the November general election — said poorer residents of color suffer from living in “food deserts” that lack access to affordable produce.
“This is a proposal of reasonable policy experimentation,” he said.
The estimated price tag for the program is less than the $140 million the city spends on supermarkets for participation in the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health Program or FRESH to sell food in underserved areas.
Mamdani, the frontrunner for the mayoralty, also claimed the city’s response to the pandemic, including quickly setting up testing and vaccination sites, showed that the government could run a few grocery stores efficiently.
“Food is non-negotiable. It’s not a luxury item,” he said.
Mamdani also took a shot at Catsimatidis.
“It’s funny even to hear some of the critiques – especially from John Catsimatidis, the owner of Gristedes – is to completely miss the fact that many New Yorkers can’t even afford to go into those types of stores today,” he said.
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