NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised that city-owned grocery stores will bring down prices for shoppers. On Monday, he announced the exact discount: 30% for some basic groceries, including vegetables, meat, bread and milk.

The city is moving to select private operators to run five city-owned stores, one in each borough. The city will build the stores and waive rent and property taxes. It is also expected to provide an operating subsidy to help pay for the discounts.

The discount will cover a “core basket” of healthy groceries, including produce, meat, seafood, pasta, bread, yogurt, butter, nuts, rice and beans. The stores will sell other products at regular market prices.

It could save shoppers about $90 per month or roughly $1,000 per year, according to an analysis by the city’s Economic Development Corp.

Mamdani announced the discount at a news conference in Brooklyn and said that the stores would set prices for staples once a month based on market-rate average prices across the city.

“No weekly fluctuations, nor sticker shock at the checkout line,” he said. “Not for our seniors living on fixed incomes, nor for the parents who rely on a regular supply of apple slices to keep toddler tantrums at bay.”

Mamdani has pledged to create the five stores by the end of his first term. They were one of his major campaign promises aimed at addressing the city’s affordability crisis.

But some small business owners and economists have raised concerns, arguing that the stores could hurt smaller supermarkets and questioning whether they are the best way to reduce grocery prices.

Frank Garcia, chair of the Multicultural Business Coalition, a group that opposes the stores, said the city’s discounts would “put our businesses out of business.”

“How are you going to compete with that?” he said.

Others have praised the stores, including groups that work to address food insecurity and two City Council members who represent neighborhoods where the stores will be located. More than a quarter of New Yorkers live in poverty, and lines outside food pantries have become a common sight.

The first city-owned grocery store is expected to open in the Bronx next year. Another location in East Harlem is expected to open by 2029. The city is still considering sites for Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island and issued a 44-page request for proposals on Monday to find operators to run the stores.

Mamdani’s budget deal with the City Council in June included $70 million in capital funding to build the stores.

The operators will handle the daily operations. They will be required to provide “family sustaining wages and benefits” and agree to a “labor peace agreement” so that workers can organize without interference, the city said.

The stores will not sell hot food to avoid competing with local bodegas that sell prepared food.

Mamdani recently named two people to lead the EDC, which is overseeing city-owned grocery stores. Anthony E. Shorris, a veteran of city government, will serve as president; Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, will serve as the board chair.

Shorris said the stores would be a priority because they were a campaign pledge.

“Commitments that mayors make to the people are some of the highest priorities of anything the government does,” Shorris said when his role was announced.

Garcia, the leader of the Multicultural Business Coalition, said he was prepared to file a lawsuit in hopes of preventing the stores from moving forward. He said store owners were offended by recent comments on Fox News by Gustavo Gordillo, a chair of New York City’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and an ally of Mamdani.

“If one publicly owned grocery store that brings prices down in the neighborhood is enough to put someone out of business, then maybe they shouldn’t have been in that business in the first place,” Gordillo said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Emma G. Fitzsimmons/Elias Williams
c. 2026 The New York Times Company