NYC’s Own Economic Agency Just Admitted Taxpayers Could Pay for Mamdani’s Groceries Twice

Zohran Mamdani promised New Yorkers government-run grocery stores with prices 30 percent below everyone else.

Now his own economic development agency just admitted that discount might cost taxpayers twice over.

New York's own numbers show exactly how taxpayers get billed a second time.

City Confirms Private Grocers May Get Bailed Out Too

New York City is now looking at tax breaks, zoning perks and other incentives for private grocers – the very businesses Mamdani's stores are supposed to undercut.

That means taxpayers could fund the discount at the register and fund a rescue package for the competitors that discount is designed to punish.

The city has already committed $70 million to open five taxpayer-owned grocery stores, with the first slated for Hunts Point in the Bronx by the end of 2027 and additional locations planned for East Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

Waverly Neer, the city's lead official on the grocery program, told NY1 the city is exploring "complementary policies and programs, grants, incentives" for the small businesses forced to compete next door.

Her agency then walked that statement back within days, insisting no grant program is "currently" under consideration – only tax abatements and zoning favors through existing city programs.

Behind the scenes, the math is even uglier.

EDC official Jamie Horton told private bidders on a call obtained by NY1 that free rent and free property tax alone will not cover the promised discount.

Horton then asked those bidders to calculate how much extra taxpayer cash they will need on top of it.

Adam Lehodey, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, called the entire pitch an illusion.

"Taxpayers will foot the bill for millions," Lehodey said, adding that New Yorkers will end up paying full price anyway, just through their tax bill instead of the register.

The Same Empty Shelves That Doomed the Soviets Are Coming to East Harlem

Heritage Foundation chief economist E.J. Antoni ran the numbers on grocery margins and found the plan doesn't survive contact with basic arithmetic.

"A 30% discount at stores with a 2% profit margin is simply a loss," Antoni said, one that taxpayers will have to cover.

He added that the artificially low prices will drain sales away from the small businesses the city claims it wants to protect.

Daniel Di Martino grew up under socialism in Venezuela, and he sees the same failure coming to East Harlem.

"The government grocery store does not care about what you want," said Di Martino, a Manhattan Institute fellow, since profit never enters its thinking.

Every regime that has tried price-fixed groceries has ended the same way.

The Fraser Institute has traced this same failure across the map, noting that socialist-era Poland burned through three times as much steel as the United States for every dollar of output it produced, waste historians have ranked among the worst economic failures of the twentieth century.

Breitbart's economic desk warned last month that Mamdani's stores will hit the identical wall, because government pricing cannot flex the way real markets do when demand outstrips supply.

Without flexible prices, the analysis found, city stores will likely be forced into rationing, capping customers to a single loaf of bread or a handful of apples just to keep shelves from going bare.

National Review went further, predicting the government stores will collapse into disorder and theft long before they ever threaten a single bodega.

Bodegas Already See the Trap

East Harlem bodega owner Ibrahim Alqushi has watched the city plan to open a taxpayer-subsidized store blocks from his shop, and he isn't buying the friendly-neighbor pitch from City Hall.

New York's small grocers spent weeks warning that a government store with free rent and a guaranteed taxpayer backstop isn't a competitor, it's an eviction notice with a ribbon-cutting.

EDC interim president Jeanny Pak floated a "library card-esque" system to control who could shop at the discount stores, and the city reversed course within days after critics pointed out the irony of demanding ID to buy milk while opposing it to vote.

That reversal means the city has no real plan to limit demand, which leaves rationing or empty shelves as the only options once the free-rent, free-tax discount runs into the real world.

New Yorkers are now staring at a program that could tax them twice over and still leave the shelves half empty.

The Mises Institute summed up the whole scheme in one line worth remembering the next time City Hall calls a subsidy a discount: government cannot manufacture savings, it can only decide which taxpayer gets the bill.

Sources:

• Amanda Macias, "NYC taxpayers could pay twice under Mamdani's city-owned grocery store plan," Fox News, August 23, 2026.
• Daniel Di Martino, quoted in "Mamdani's government-run grocery stores will fail 'like every socialist experiment': economist," Fox News, April 14, 2026.
• E.J. Antoni, quoted in "NYC taxpayers could pay twice under Mamdani's city-owned grocery store plan," Fox News, August 23, 2026.
• Fraser Institute, "Mamdani's socialist grocery store would fail New Yorkers," July 29, 2025.
• Breitbart Business Digest, "The Fatal Economics of Mamdani's Government Grocery Stores," Breitbart, July 28, 2026.
• National Review, "Mamdani's Government Grocery Stores Won't Last Long Enough to Put Bodegas Out of Business," August 2026.
• Mises Institute, "The Seen and the Unseen Cost of Mamdani's Grocery Discount," August 2026.
• Fox News Digital, "New York City bodega owner blasts Mamdani's new, discounted city-run grocery stores," July 30, 2026.