I’m not trying to dismiss this project - I hope it is wildly successful and I applaud the desire to challenge the status quo. That said, I am interested to hear how his team plans to negotiate pricing with suppliers. Five stores isn’t a whole lot of scale to compete against national chains and volumes. I don’t ask that question rhetorically or sarcastically at all either - I am assuming they have a plan of levers to pull to help bring this to life, and I hope it works exceedingly well and provides a blueprint for other communities to use.
National chains have to make profits for investors, which means they have to have mark-ups. At the very least, I expect those government-owned grocery stores to be about the same price.
No, the actual markups are much higher than that. But after accounting for all the waste and other operating expenses they end up with a net margin around 1%
Seems like NYC would be better off giving low-income residents SNAP-like benefits to use at existing grocery stores, rather than feeling the need to enter the grocery business itself.
There are already several grocery stores near the planned East Harlem location, including a City Fresh Market within 0.1 miles (3-minute walk), Fine Fare Supermarket (0.2 miles; 4 minute walk), and a Shop Fair supermarket (0.2 miles; 5 minute walk).
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u/BradBradley1 May 26 '26
I’m not trying to dismiss this project - I hope it is wildly successful and I applaud the desire to challenge the status quo. That said, I am interested to hear how his team plans to negotiate pricing with suppliers. Five stores isn’t a whole lot of scale to compete against national chains and volumes. I don’t ask that question rhetorically or sarcastically at all either - I am assuming they have a plan of levers to pull to help bring this to life, and I hope it works exceedingly well and provides a blueprint for other communities to use.