Field Trip to Mamdani's Socialist Supermarket Goes Hilariously Wrong

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By Teri Christoph

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's plan to open five government-controlled grocery stores – one for each borough! – is going about as well as you'd expect a taxpayer-funded socialist supermarket experiment would go.

Not great.

On Wednesday, city officials took a group of prospective vendors to tour the site of the Harlem store, dressing them up in hardhats and high-visibility vests. Everyone was ready for a muddy-boots tour of the construction site, hyped to be wowed by this socialist utopia coming to life. 

They were greeted by an empty parking lot with no construction whatsoever. Even worse, there was trash blowing across the vacant lot and nary a sign to suggest Mamdani’s socialist supermarket was arriving anytime soon.

Big Apple officials took prospective bidders on a pathetic tour Wednesday of a trash-strewn empty lot in East Harlem where Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s planned $30 million city-owned grocery store is supposed to become reality.

The bidders wore hardhats on the city Economic Development Corporation-led tour to the under-the-Metro-North viaduct site next to La Marqueta, despite no work actually being done yet.

The vendors didn't seem one bit impressed by what they saw, with some voicing doubt about participating in Mamdani's scheme. Others left the door open, but there are conditions that need to be met. 

“We are very cautiously optimistic about this potential project and what this potential project means to the community and food deserts,” said Phillip Grant, founder and CEO of business consulting firm Phillip Grant & Associates. 

“It has to be a full, transparent partnership. We also have to get the public involved. There’s other things we have to think about: market forces, transportation, weather. So we have to ensure whatever model an operator like myself or a group that we put together build, that it can be flexible enough to adapt to those concerns.”

One local reporter who tagged along on the field trip talked to one prospective vendor who said he was happy that the mayor was doing something about rising food prices, but said he wouldn't like to be put in the position of competing with the government-run stores.

Of course he wouldn’t. 

Private grocers and bodegas have to cover expensive things like rent, property taxes, payroll, utilities, insurance, and the full cost of their inventory; they then price their goods to cover those costs and maybe make a profit. Mamdani’s Socialist Safeways, by contrast, would have their costs absorbed or subsidized by taxpayers, allowing them to price their wares low and force competitors out of business. 

The mayor's office is trying to ease the fears of Big Apple grocers by promising them – via the "lead official for Mayor Mamdani's NYC Groceries" – that there will be taxpayer money and free stuff for them, too. Everyone gets a handout!

This vow by the city to "come alongside" them doesn't seem to be easing the minds of immigrant-owned grocery stores. A coalition of them plan to sue to stop the city from using taxpayer dollars to bankroll competitors that can offer artificially low prices while avoiding the costs private grocers have to absorb to keep their doors open.

That empty lot strewn with garbage is an apt metaphor for Mamdani’s grocery scheme: a socialist dream with a big price tag and not much reality underneath it.

Original Here

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