Some of my earliest memories are from a grocery store.
My mother, and later her sister, worked at a locally owned Key Market running the deli department. Baked goods, hot meals, sliced meats and fresh salads, and the best donuts you ever tasted made from scratch every day — it was a kid’s paradise. She would sometimes take me to work on Saturdays, and I’d help, doing everything but slicing the meat (age-restricted because it’s dangerous). It was fun for me, and I learned things I would not have learned watching cartoons.
Later, just before I married and became a military wife, I worked at my local Kroger regional office supporting loyalty card and marketing issues for, gosh, I guess it was about 200 stores. I learned a lot about the grocery business.
All this is to say: I know the difference between grocery economics and political theater.
Scamdani’s ever-evolving store plans
Zohran Mamdani, New York’s newest Hizzoner, ran largely on a pledge to create city-owned grocery stores, and today he’s working to fulfill that promise. Sort of. The idea was to decrease prices for consumers by removing the “gouging” profit model.
Some of his campaign promises included:
- “Grocery prices are out of control. The cost of eggs and milk has skyrocketed. Some stores are even using dynamic pricing, jacking up the cost over the course of the day depending on what they can get away with. It doesn’t need to be this way. I’m Zohran Mamdani, and as mayor, I will create a network of city-owned grocery stores. It’s like a public option for produce. We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores, whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging.”
- “I’m Zohran Mamdani, and as mayor, I will create a network of city-owned grocery stores. It’s like a public option for produce.”
- “We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores, whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging.” (This one is especially rich, as you’ll see.)
- “Last month, we announced that we would fulfill a campaign promise: that we would lower prices by creating a network of city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough. In these stores, prices will be cheaper.”
Sounds great. So last month, he announced the reality: a limited core basket including produce, meat, seafood, milk, bread, yogurt, and a few other things to be priced 30% below “typical retail,” whatever that really means, in city-owned and subsidized stores run by private for-profit operators. Operators are entitled to price everything outside the core basket at whatever they like. The discounted “basket” will be subsidized by the city. The city covers capital, rent, and property tax. And users, as announced today, will be required to prove residency with a “library card” style identification.
As Darth Vader said, the deal has been altered. Pray he does not alter it further.
Hellbound and Down 