Now, Mamdani is unveiling plans to start bringing that promise to fruition. The first of the stores, he announced Monday, will be opened at The Peninsula, an affordable housing complex being built in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, next year.
Mamdani previously announced plans last month to open another city-owned grocery store at the La Marqueta marketplace in Manhattan’s East Harlem, which he hopes to launch by 2029.
In total, Mamdani has pledged to ultimately open five city-owned grocery stores—one in each of New York City’s five boroughs. His Administration is still examining locations for stores in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, and is encouraging property owners to recommend sites to the city online.
Read more: Did Zohran Mamdani's New Budget Really Eliminate New York City’s Deficit?
The plan has also sparked opposition from some small-business groups and independent grocers, who argue that city-owned stores could disrupt retail food markets in the city, in which profit margins are already thin.
The first of the planned stores, which Mamdani announced this week, will be in the Bronx.
Though one of the world’s largest food distribution centers operates in the neighborhood, the Mayor estimated that 77 percent of households in that section of the South Bronx have difficulty affording basic necessities. According to Mamdani’s office, there is only one full-service supermarket within a quarter mile of the Hunts Point site, Compare Foods Supermarket.
“It's a good quote, but I disagree,” the Mayor said, adding, “I think nine more terrifying words are actually, ‘I worked all day and can't feed my family.’”
The Bronx store will cost an estimated $10 million to build, according to city officials.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, whose district the planned store is located in, voiced support for the initiative. In a statement, Ocasio-Cortez praised Mamdani’s effort to expand access to affordable groceries in the South Bronx.
The plans for the Bronx store have raised concerns among some local business owners, however, who worry a city-run supermarket could draw customers away from existing neighborhood grocers.
Some community leaders have also questioned whether public funding could instead support existing neighborhood food sellers. Majora Carter, an entrepreneur and longtime Hunts Point advocate, told the Times the city could potentially help residents more quickly by subsidizing local supermarkets, green delis, or street produce vendors rather than opening a new municipal store.
The Manhattan store
Opened in 1936 as the Park Avenue Retail Market, La Marqueta was originally created to bring pushcart vendors under one roof and improve access to fresh food for working-class New Yorkers. Over time, as East Harlem became a center of Puerto Rican and broader Latino life in the city, the market evolved into a long-standing cultural and commercial hub and acquired its current name. Though its footprint has diminished over the decades, it still supports over 20 small businesses and 120 workers, including restaurants, artists, and community organizations.
The planned 9,000 square-foot store will be built from the ground up on an empty lot at La Marqueta.
Pushback against Mamdani’s plans
As Mamdani has moved forward with enacting his promise to build city-owned grocery stores, critics of the plan have begun mobilizing to oppose it.
“This is a waste of our tax dollars,” Frank Garcia, the group’s chairman, told the Times, arguing that the city should instead pursue subsidies or other mechanisms to reduce prices rather than launching stores that he contended would compete directly with private grocers in already competitive, low-profit retail markets.
“It’s unfair,” Francisco Marte, a Bronx bodega owner who heads the Bodega and Small Business Group in New York, told the Gothamist. “They are using our tax money to compete with us.”
Mamdani has defended the proposal as part of a broader effort to address affordability in New York City, arguing that rising food costs require direct public intervention.
“We’re going to make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table,” he said when announcing the East Harlem store.
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