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NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

grocerydive.com

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Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#151

Post by orwin »

halflife wrote: post #108
bojan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does the availability have to be wide? Maybe those stories can do few things, but do them well. Sell staple foods and healthy choices.

Because than people won’t come to your store. People buy where they can purchase the maximum of their shopping cart in a single place. That is why you have loss leader grocers, where they pull people with dramatic discounts on specific items, but the total cart costs the same

That's not how it used to work. That's still not how it works in my country. I buy my bread from a specialized shop, my cheese from another, and my fresh produce from yet another. I know people who only buy their meat from a butcher (I do it sometimes, but not always).

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#152

Post by asdff »

KK7NIL wrote: post #144
asdff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much to write in a HN comment so here is a substack post (1) probably worthy of its own HN post. And how is that the obvious solution? You see who is in the Whitehouse and you think this is a champion of antitrust and lifting up the little man? Quite the opposite. NYC government is a separate entity than federal government with different limits to its powers. They can't do anything about cartel behavior. They can…

That post was not at all worth my time, it just cherry picked data without ever putting it together to show intentional price manipulation or monopolistic behavior (no, showing concentration isn't enough). > They can't do anything about cartel behavior. Incorrect, several states have passed their own antitrust laws, there's nothing that limits it to the federal government. > The government engages in commerce all the…

>I don't see how the government driving out competition by running its own grocery stores, presumably at a loss, is "facilitating conditions for commerce".

If someone is stealing your only $20 out of your pocket and I stop them and you now have $20 in your pocket, I've just created conditions for commerce on the part of you taking that $20 and spending it someplace else in the market than on the thief. When you give a dollar to a rich person vs a working class person, that dollar is far more likely to be circulated back into the economy in the latter case than in the former case. The poor person spends the bulk of their paycheck on needs and a handful of wants, real hard items, not speculative assets. The rich person bids up Tesla stock and makes Elon into a billionaire off a PE of 317 now, thin air pumped into the balloon in other words with all this money tied up in overpriced TSLA stock than empowering real work in the economy.

What do you believe the role of government is? Do you believe that every resource we use in life should be priced such that a handful of individuals have the opportunity to live fat off the transaction? Inefficiencies at every level of the supply chain?

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#153

Post by ceejayoz »

WalterBright wrote: post #149
ceejayoz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could it be the decriminalization of shoplifting? Or maybe excessive taxes? Or mandates on wages? Could it be the K-shaped economy? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-08/top-1-ear... "After years of declines, America’s middle class now holds a smaller share of U.S. wealth than the top 1%." "Over the past 30 years, 10 percentage points of American wealth has shifted to the top 20% of earners, who now ho…

"Share" of the wealth says nothing about what the amount is. For example, if you create $10 of wealth, my share of the total wealth goes down, but my wealth is unaffected.

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2023/01/16/how-the-worlds-...

"About $42 trillion in new wealth was created in the first two years of the pandemic. Two-thirds of that has gone to the richest 1% of the world’s people, according to a report out Monday from the nonprofit organization Oxfam. In the United States, billionaires are a third richer now than they were before the pandemic."

> For example, if you create $10 of wealth, my share of the total wealth goes down, but my wealth is unaffected.

Sure. Inflation doesn't exist. Isn't that lovely?

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#154

Post by KK7NIL »

asdff wrote: post #152
KK7NIL wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That post was not at all worth my time, it just cherry picked data without ever putting it together to show intentional price manipulation or monopolistic behavior (no, showing concentration isn't enough). > They can't do anything about cartel behavior. Incorrect, several states have passed their own antitrust laws, there's nothing that limits it to the federal government. > The government engages in commerce all the…

>I don't see how the government driving out competition by running its own grocery stores, presumably at a loss, is "facilitating conditions for commerce". If someone is stealing your only $20 out of your pocket and I stop them and you now have $20 in your pocket, I've just created conditions for commerce on the part of you taking that $20 and spending it someplace else in the market than on the thief. When you give…

> If someone is stealing your only $20 out of your pocket and I stop them and you now have $20 in your pocket, I've just created conditions for commerce on the part of you taking that $20 and spending it someplace else in the market than on the thief.

Grocery stores aren't thieves, they're largely pretty terrible businesses with extremely thin margins.

But, to engage with your ridiculous bait and switch: whether I or the thief have $20 is irrelevant to the commerce as he'll presumably spend it at the market too, so even this ridiculously contrived example falls flat on its face.

> rich person bids up Tesla stock and makes Elon into a billionaire off a PE of 317 now, thin air pumped into the balloon in other words with all this money tied up in overpriced TSLA stock than empowering real work in the economy.

Here you go again with some ridiculously biased example, but I'll engage with it for your own sake: money that's invested doesn't just disappear, it goes into the pockets of employees and suppliers or gets reinvested in some other way, continuing the cycle.

> What do you believe the role of government is?

Limited.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#155

Post by wahnfrieden »

halflife wrote: post #110
wahnfrieden wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some neighborhoods there are only luxury grocery options. Groceries also form cartels as the other commenter mentioned. The biggest grocers in Canada did it for many years until they were penalized for it (though it’s likely still continuing in other ways - the same players are now under investigation for selling underweight meats) The estimated cost to consumers from bread price-fixing was $4-5 billion

It’s about supply and demand. Luxury grocers provide a shopping “experience”, where low cost grocers do not. In a luxury neighborhood it would make sense the shoppers are looking for experience more so than low cost.

The neighborhoods I'm talking about also have many people living in poverty or near it. Looks like you live in Israel which is perhaps less integrated / more segregated than Brooklyn (I don't know though, I haven't been to see first hand)

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#156

Post by halflife »

orwin wrote: post #151
halflife wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because than people won’t come to your store. People buy where they can purchase the maximum of their shopping cart in a single place. That is why you have loss leader grocers, where they pull people with dramatic discounts on specific items, but the total cart costs the same

That's not how it used to work. That's still not how it works in my country. I buy my bread from a specialized shop, my cheese from another, and my fresh produce from yet another. I know people who only buy their meat from a butcher (I do it sometimes, but not always).

It really depends on the countries culture

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#157

Post by ceejayoz »

scoofy wrote: post #139
ceejayoz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costco sells chickens as loss-leaders. They don't run out, and Walmart doesn't go buy all of them to resell.

A loss leader isn’t a business model when everything is being sold at a loss. The idea that Mamdani is going to undercut a low margin business with higher labor costs is just silly.

> The idea that Mamdani is going to undercut a low margin business with higher labor costs is just silly.

Why?

Stock store/generic brands. Don't stock 40 variants of Colgate toothpaste that all have the same ingredients and are described separately as "fresh mint", "cool mint", and "mint". Stock more staples than sushi.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#158

Post by hitekker »

halflife wrote: post #3

This sounds extremely non economically viable. The municipality which has monopoly on land taxes and costs will compete with stores that must pay taxes and rent? Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close? Won’t a better option be subsidizing taxes for grocery stores, and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers?

The nyc subreddit which I'd say is pretty pro-Mamdani shared your concerns.

https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1sjq9v9/mayor_zohran_m...

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#159

Post by scoofy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #157
scoofy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A loss leader isn’t a business model when everything is being sold at a loss. The idea that Mamdani is going to undercut a low margin business with higher labor costs is just silly.

> The idea that Mamdani is going to undercut a low margin business with higher labor costs is just silly. Why? Stock store/generic brands. Don't stock 40 variants of Colgate toothpaste that all have the same ingredients and are described separately as "fresh mint", "cool mint", and "mint". Stock more staples than sushi.

I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say “low margin.” The types of products you are describing are the extremely low margin products.

People pay more for the 16 flavors of Colgate because they want to pay more for Colgate… that higher price means more margin for the retailer. By eliminating the higher margin products in an already low margin business, you are basically making the situation even worse.

The only reason why generic brands at stores can end up being high margin for the retailer is because the retailer has literally used their market position to start manufacturing cheaper versions of high margin products on their shelves. Unless NYC want to start manufacturing dryer sheets and toothpaste, that’s not an option for them.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#160

Post by ceejayoz »

scoofy wrote: post #159
ceejayoz wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that Mamdani is going to undercut a low margin business with higher labor costs is just silly. Why? Stock store/generic brands. Don't stock 40 variants of Colgate toothpaste that all have the same ingredients and are described separately as "fresh mint", "cool mint", and "mint". Stock more staples than sushi.

I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say “low margin.” The types of products you are describing are the extremely low margin products . People pay more for the 16 flavors of Colgate because they want to pay more for Colgate… that higher price means more margin for the retailer. By eliminating the higher margin products in an already low margin business, you are basically making the situation even worse. Th…

> the retailer has literally used their market position to start manufacturing cheaper versions of high margin products on their shelves

And we don't think a city of 8M people can use their market position to do such a thing?

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