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Zohran Mamdani is calling for city-owned grocery stores. NYC already has them.
By
Ryan Kailath
Published Jul 22, 2025
Modified Jul 22, 2025
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Ryan Kailath
By
Ryan Kailath
Published Jul 22, 2025
Modified Jul 22, 2025
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Of the dozens of policy proposals in Zohran Mamdani’s platform, few have generated as much debate as the Democratic mayoral nominee’s call for city-owned grocery stores.
Progressives, food policy professors, and left-leaning publications have lauded the idea. Meanwhile, Mayor Eric Adams characterized the plan as a “false promise,” while Mamdani’s opponent Andrew Cuomo dismissed the idea as a “slogan” that couldn’t come true. Gristedes owner and major Republican donor John Catsimatidis has threatened to close his stores rather than compete with subsidized city grocers.
Both sides have largely missed a crucial point: New York already has a version of city-owned grocery stores. Namely, the six markets overseen by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit that manages city-owned property to boost economic development. These grocers include Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side, Moore Street Market in East Williamsburg, and others in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens.
Their purpose is not to turn a profit but to provide access to healthy and affordable groceries for underserved communities, according to an Economic Development Corporation spokesperson. These stores are given deep discounts on rent to pass savings on to customers.
The Essex Street Market is one of six public markets still standing from a LaGuardia-era effort to move pushcart vendors off the street in exchange for cheap rent in city buildings.
Ryan Kailath
The debate over Mamdani’s proposal gets at fundamental questions about how NYC tackles food insecurity and affordability. While critics like Catsimatidis, who has endorsed Eric Adams in the mayoral race, frame the idea as “radical socialism,” the city already operates a version of it, and has for decades.
Mamdani has stayed mostly silent on the proposal since his primary victory, and his campaign did not respond to several requests for comment.
Low prices by design
People sometimes think of the Essex Street Market as a fancy food hall – and it does have stalls selling $50 balsamic vinegars or exotic alpine cheese. But it also contains a long-running meat market, a fish market, and three grocery stands, including Viva Fruits and Vegetables, which has been run by the same Dominican American family since 2000.
There are five supermarkets within a five-block radius of Essex Market, including a Trader Joe’s and a Union Market. Viva beats them all on produce prices: five limes for $1, clamshells of fresh herbs for $1, two bunches of scallions for $1.50.
“That's why everybody comes here,” said Luci Valle, who has been shopping at Essex Market since 1974. “Because in the supermarket it’s just expensive, very expensive.”
The low prices are by design, according to Luis Vargas of Luna Brothers Fruits and Vegetables, a stall on the other end of the market with similarly low prices.
Asked how he managed to price his goods so well, Vargas replied simply: “The city.”
Essex is one of six public markets still standing from a LaGuardia-era effort to move pushcart vendors off the street in exchange for cheap rent in city buildings. Longtime “legacy” tenants, as the Economic Development Corporation calls them, still enjoy deep rent discounts, while newer vendors pay higher prices that are still below market-rate.
The Economic Development Corporation is a quasi-public nonprofit that manages city-owned land. A spokesperson declined to state if Essex Street Market was profitable. But they confirmed that all the markets pay below-average retail rents for their area. The corporation reviews each vendor’s prices before renewing their lease agreements every few years, they said.
In addition to low prices, Essex Market offers food that’s difficult to find elsewhere, according to Angel Gee, who said she’d been shopping there for decades.
“This is the only place I can come to get all the stuff that I need”, Gee said, whose bag was loaded up with empanada discos and sweet plantains. “I come all the way down from Midtown now just to come here.”
‘The government has been in the food retail business for generations.’
Mamdani’s proposal differs from existing models in one key way: he would eliminate rent and property tax, rather than offering low rent and tax breaks. The scale is different, but the goal is the same: to lower costs for grocery operators so that they can pass savings on to customers.
In the Wall Street Journal, Catsimatidis wrote that Mamdani’s proposal would “collapse our food supply, kill private industry, and drag us down a path toward the bread lines of the old Soviet Union.”
But food policy experts note that these ideas are not new in New York City, and are not limited to the Economic Development Corporation markets.
“The government has been in the food retail business for generations,” said Nevin Cohen, director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. “Government supermarkets, Greenmarkets and other kinds of food programs are all around us.”
New York City’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program gives tax incentives and zoning benefits to supermarkets that open in underserved areas. A 2024 audit by the city comptroller found the program provided modest benefits at a relatively low cost, while noting that its impact was limited in scale.
On the federal level, the military operates its own publicly funded grocery chain: the Defense Commissary Agency, which provides savings of around 25% on average versus nearby commercial retailers, according to a spokesperson. It is only available to military personnel and their families, veterans and civilian defense employees.
Nicholas Freudenberg, a professor at the CUNY School of Public Health, said DeCA’s model resembles Mamdani’s proposal most closely, with wholesale pricing and centralized operations. New York City has a DeCA commissary at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn.
Freudenberg said that rather than competing with the private sector, city-owned grocery stores could complement them by filling gaps in the market, such as low-income areas with limited grocery options.
“Public supermarkets are a worthwhile and promising component of a comprehensive strategy to grow the public food sector in New York City,” Freudenberg said.
He cautioned against “boutique level” pilots that fail to scale or connect with existing infrastructure, and said an ambitious vision that might integrate with SNAP, food pantries, and city nutrition programs could make the difference between success and obscurity.
“The fundamental food problem in New York City is that the market has been unable to provide healthy, affordable food to the million or more New Yorkers who struggle to find and afford the food they need,” Freudenberg said. “I want to emphasize how positive I feel about trying something new.”
Where to find the city owned grocery stores in this story
Arthur Avenue Market, 2344 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458
La Marqueta, 1590 Park Ave, New York, NY 10029
Essex Market, 88 Essex St, New York, NY 10002
Moore Street Market, 110 Moore St, Brooklyn, NY 11206
Jamaica Market, 90-40 160th St, Jamaica, NY 11432
Thirteenth Avenue Market, 1274 39th St, Brooklyn, NY 11218
Tagged
food
new york city
Ryan Kailath
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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