Mamdani administration sued for municipal grocery stores

A coalition of supermarket and bodega owners called the ‘Multicultural Business Coalition’ have sued Mamdani’s administration, saying the city’s subsidized grocery stores threaten their livelihoods due to undercutting prices.

The coalition says their civil rights will be violated if the cheaper city-backed grocery stores run, saying:

“Plaintiffs have been denied equal protection where the Plaintiffs, predominantly immigrant and minority owned grocery stores, are unable to offer similarly discounted products of the NYC-GP [city-backed stores].

“Therefore, the Plaintiffs are suffering undue harm,” they added.

Mark Jaffe, the president of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, representing the grocers, said the municipal grocery stores “sell food items 30 percent below the market-rate, a rate that rivals or exceeds Walmart discounts,”

The grocers said the municipal stores would have the same effect as opening a Walmart in New York, something which the grocers have fought for years to keep outside the city’s market.

They said that an “untold amount of opportunity for minority businesses and small businesses at large” would be gone if the municipal grocery stores open.

Mayor Mamdani addressed the lawsuit in a statement on Monday, saying:

“We are talking about a reflection of a cost-of-living crisis that has seen grocery prices increase by about 30 percent over the last few years,

“And we’re also talking about delivering five city-run grocery stores in a city of 8.5 million people that has more than a thousand grocery stores,

“And we’ve seen, in fact, with Essex Street Market in Manhattan, as well as Moore Street Market in Brooklyn, a model where the city has subsidized groceries and it has not had a negative effect on bodegas around them or on grocery stores around them,”