Government groceries? Mamdani eyes supermarket experiment

New Yorkers struggling to afford food in the country's biggest city -- and often exorbitantly expensive financial capital -- may finally get a break if the incoming socialist mayor's daring new plan succeeds.

Some 1.4 million residents in the Big Apple are food insecure, meaning they're unable to regularly access affordable, healthy food. One in three uses food banks.

Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won a stunning victory, in part on his promise to open affordable city-run supermarkets.

The 34-year-old vows the stores will focus "on keeping prices low, not making a profit."

It's a novel idea in a city more associated with Wall Street wealth.

The stores would be exempt from rent and taxes, with savings passed to shoppers, while centralised warehousing and distribution would aim to reduce overheads.

But Mamdani's experimental plan to open five pilot stores on unused city land, as well as free buses and subsidised childcare, is still only small-scale -- and not universally welcome.

Nevin Cohen, an associate professor at CUNY's Urban Food Policy Institute, said Mamdani's plan remains "pretty vague" on basic points like location or even type of store.

President Donald Trump, who hosted Mamdani for a surprisingly cordial visit at the White House earlier this month, has led many right-wingers branding the incoming mayor a "communist."

And private supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis, a Trump ally, is campaigning against Mamdani's city groceries, asking "how do you compete against that?"

Affordability crisis

No one disputes the need for cheaper and better food.

More than 40% of people in the poorest of New York's five boroughs, the Bronx, eat neither fruits nor vegetables in an average week.

Some 1.8 million New Yorkers are already dependent on federal food subsidies, a program briefly frozen during a row in Congress over government spending this month.

Even Trump agreed with Mamdani at their meeting that "getting housing built and food and prices" should be priorities.

"The new word is affordability. Another word is just groceries," Trump said.

New York has an existing city program to lure supermarkets to underserved areas called FRESH. It uses tax and planning incentives to entice developers and private store operators.

At one outpost of the FRESH program in East New York, a deprived Brooklyn neighbourhood, a Fine Fare supermarket opened under a new apartment building in 2023.

Laura Smith, the NYC Department of City Planning's deputy executive director, told AFP that FRESH helps "encourage more fresh food supermarkets across the city in areas where residents have a harder time reaching full-line grocery stores."

In return for permission to build extra apartments, the developers of the store and 40 others were obliged to allocate space for a supermarket. Thirty-five more are in the pipeline.

National solution?

Mamdani is cool on the FRESH project, saying on his website that instead of "spending millions of dollars to subsidise private grocery store operators we should redirect public money to a real 'public option.'"

But Fine Fare is a hit locally.

"I like it because it's close by to where I live and they gave everything you need," said retiree Ivette Bravo, 63, shopping for the holidays.

The scheme, started under mayor Mike Bloomberg in 2009, has survived two other mayors and is fixed in city law.

The FRESH program had been "modestly successful" as it "helps people not have to travel further," said Cohen, the policy expert.

If Mamdani's project is successful, it will add another option.

But everything being done adds up to a drop in the bucket for a city with some 1,000 supermarkets in total.

In the end, solving food insecurity isn't something New York can do alone, whatever the innovations, Cohen said.

"That actually requires national-level policy."