Every generation gets its own version of the same bad idea. A progressive politician spots a genuine problem — housing costs, healthcare, food prices — and decides the answer is simple: let the government handle it. Never mind that the government has fumbled every version of this experiment since the New Deal cafeteria. This time, they insist, will be different. Spoiler: it never is.

The current installment comes out of New York City, where a democratic socialist mayor has apparently looked at the grocery business — an industry famous for margins so thin you could slice deli meat with them — and thought, “I can do that.” He’s wagering seventy million taxpayer dollars on it. But the people who actually understand how a grocery store survives aren’t impressed. Not even a little.

From Fox News:

A former grocer is joining the chorus of criticism against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan for government-run grocery stores, arguing it would harm hundreds of small businesses forced to compete with them.

“That supermarket will just bleed red the entire time it’s open, from the first time you turn the key until it closes,” Rep. Mike Rulli, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital. “And I would bet the farm there’s no way these grocery stores last more than five years — they might not even last a year.”

Rulli isn’t theorizing. He grew up with his family’s Ohio-based chain, Rulli Brothers, and he knows the brutal arithmetic of keeping a grocery operation alive. Mayor Mamdani’s grand vision commits $70 million from the city budget to construct five government-run stores — one per borough — with a pledge to price goods 30% below typical retail. Once a month, the city itself would dictate prices on a core set of staples.

Generous on paper. Delusional in practice. That’s what happens when your business plan is built on ideology instead of a balance sheet.

A track record written entirely in red ink

Here’s the thing nobody at City Hall seems interested in acknowledging: this has been tried before. Multiple times. It keeps ending the same way.

Baldwin, Florida — a small town, not some sprawling metropolis — invested $150,000 to open a municipal grocery market in 2019. The early press coverage was glowing. By 2024, the store was dead. The town couldn’t break even. In Kansas City, local government went bigger, sinking nearly $18 million into a grocery store and shopping center. That one collapsed in 2025 thanks to rising crime and anemic sales.

Two different cities. Two different scales. Same result. But sure, New York — the city that can’t keep its subway running on time — will crack the code.

Punishing the people he pretends to protect

The most infuriating part of Mamdani’s scheme is the damage it will inflict on the very communities he claims to serve. Carlos Collado, a Dominican immigrant, has run independent grocery stores in the Bronx and Manhattan for three decades. Thirty years of early mornings, tight margins, and relentless competition — and now he has to compete against a store bankrolled by the city treasury.

Frank Garcia, chairman of the National Association of Latino State Chambers, didn’t mince words: “It’s going to really devastate the economic growth of the small minority ethnic business.” The Multicultural Business Coalition has already threatened to sue.

And when a chair of New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter was asked about struggling store owners on Fox News, his response was breathtaking: “If one publicly owned grocery store that brings prices down in the neighborhood is enough to put someone out of business, then maybe they shouldn’t have been in that business in the first place.”

That’s the quiet cruelty hiding behind every progressive promise. Thirty years of an immigrant’s sweat equity dismissed with a shrug.

Margins don’t negotiate with socialists

Rulli broke the numbers down plainly. Grocery stores run on roughly 27% gross margins. Sounds healthy — until you pay your bills. Net profit sits at a razor-thin 1.25 to 1.5%. Now stack Mamdani’s mandates on top: union-level wages for all workers, a ban on selling hot prepared foods (one of the few reliable high-margin categories in modern grocery), and that theatrical 30% discount promise.

Columbia Business School professor Stephen Zagor conceded that bulk purchasing might yield some savings, but warned those gains “could easily be offset by the cost of having them operate it.” Even the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission pointed out that direct support — like earned income tax credits — would be a far more cost-effective way to help families struggling with food costs.

But cost-effectiveness was never really the point. The point was the press conference with the bananas.

When the ribbon comes down

These stores will close. The $70 million will have evaporated. The immigrant grocers who lost customers to a government-backed competitor may never recover what they built. And Zohran Mamdani will have moved on to his next grand experiment, armed with fresh talking points and someone else’s money.

That’s how socialism operates. The architects never stick around to clean up the wreckage. They leave that part to the taxpayers and the small business owners — the people who were doing just fine before the government decided to help.

Key Takeaways

• Government-run grocery stores have failed repeatedly — from Baldwin, FL to Kansas City — wasting millions in taxpayer money.
• Mamdani’s $70 million plan directly threatens immigrant-owned small businesses across all five boroughs.
• Grocery net margins of barely 1.5% make subsidized 30%-discount stores financially unsustainable.
• Direct tax relief would help struggling families far more effectively than socialist vanity projects.

Sources: Fox News, the Guardian