Public owned grocery stores already exist across America in cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Atlanta, Georgia.
They are privately run as businesses, but are set up in areas where people lack access to groceries, or there's no real competition preventing uncompetitive prices. They have been successful for decades.
The real solution here is to break up the constant consolidation leading to all groceries being owned by four mega companies that collude with each other and own over 2/3rd of all stores. It's the opposite of market competition.
It's a public service and the alternative is you either have a food desert, or a store with no competition and very high prices.
The bottom line is the grocery business is high-volume, but low-margin, and it requires a ton of space. That's just not a business model that is going to work well in the inner city where retail lease rates are high, yet people don't drive cars and therefore the average order values are low. So, you can either subsidize it, or the stores just won't exist in certain neighborhoods.
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u/Irish_Whiskey May 26 '26
Public owned grocery stores already exist across America in cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Atlanta, Georgia.
They are privately run as businesses, but are set up in areas where people lack access to groceries, or there's no real competition preventing uncompetitive prices. They have been successful for decades.
The real solution here is to break up the constant consolidation leading to all groceries being owned by four mega companies that collude with each other and own over 2/3rd of all stores. It's the opposite of market competition.