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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

#161

Post by steanne »

ck2 wrote: post #56
flats wrote: post #12

I was very skeptical of these plans at first—as a New Yorker, I don’t exactly have a lot of trust in our city’s government to run things well. But I’ve come around. Let’s try something new! Let’s show people that local governments in the United States really are capable of making a difference in their daily lives. If it fails, well, we tried & we’ll keep trying.

"let's try it" is exactly the right attitude So many conservative states and cities absolutely running things into the ground, making people miserable and oppressed and their cost of living skyrocketing for years, decades, look at Texas look at Florida, so many examples So why not try something progressive for a change and see what happens? Why the heck not just try?

and make it a good try, too. you can't improve your situation a little by jumping halfway over a hole.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#162

Post by scoofy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #160
scoofy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No! That’s ridiculous. New York City is full of businesses (services) that can barely survive and constantly need to get bailed out by the state.

The idea that somehow NYC is going to start operating a for-profit toothpaste company to prop up a grocery store is genuinely absurd. There likely isn't even enough people in NYC to justify the costs of production! We're talking about national and international retailers engaged in these practices... selling to hundreds of millions of customers.

These are very risky endeavors that have bankrupted multiple grocery chains. NYC should not be operating something with that risk profile to simple get cheap consumer packaged goods on the shelves... especially when the business is already extremely competitive and low margin!

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#163

Post by ceejayoz »

scoofy wrote: post #162
ceejayoz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No! That’s ridiculous. New York City is full of businesses (services) that can barely survive and constantly need to get bailed out by the state. The idea that somehow NYC is going to start operating a for-profit toothpaste company to prop up a grocery store is genuinely absurd. There likely isn't even enough people in NYC to justify the costs of production! We're talking about national and international retailers en…

> The idea that somehow NYC is going to start operating a for-profit toothpaste company to prop up a grocery store is genuinely absurd.

That is not at all how store brands work.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#164

Post by ceejayoz »

rdtsc wrote: post #136
ceejayoz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they sell things that are much cheaper, restaurants could start sourcing their food from there, too. Why get your chicken from some supplier if you can buy it from a cheaper government run store at much less. Restaurants already do this. They buy from wholesalers, because they're cheaper than the grocery store.

> Restaurants already do this. They buy from wholesalers, because they're cheaper than the grocery store. But now grocery stores could be cheaper than wholesalers if there are any subsidies involved or selling at a loss is a thing. Why go to wholesalers when you can camp out with a van by the government subsidized stores when it opens or when delivery comes. Not saying this is insurmountable, the stores can implement…

> But now grocery stores could be cheaper than wholesalers

I really don’t think this will be the case. That’s not the goal here.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#165

Post by scoofy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #163
scoofy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No! That’s ridiculous. New York City is full of businesses (services) that can barely survive and constantly need to get bailed out by the state. The idea that somehow NYC is going to start operating a for-profit toothpaste company to prop up a grocery store is genuinely absurd. There likely isn't even enough people in NYC to justify the costs of production! We're talking about national and international retailers en…

> The idea that somehow NYC is going to start operating a for-profit toothpaste company to prop up a grocery store is genuinely absurd. That is not at all how store brands work.

It's still a company and a brand, even if it's a private label or white label products. It's still an investment with the potential to lose a ton of money. It's still a business. I still think the idea that NYC's grocery stores are somehow going to out compete stores with much larger volume is just a ludicrous prospect. Especially when they're going to pay their employee's more.

But, maybe it works and I'm missing something. I mean, is it a worthwhile experiment? Sure, but I hope there is a cap on how much money they're allowed to lose before the program is shuttered.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#166

Post by thinkingtoilet »

halflife wrote: post #143
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again. This exists. There is no theoretical here. Go look up how the military commissaries work. That will answer your question.

military commissaries are subsidized with taxes. So would these stores have lower prices because of tax subsidies? What prevents rich people from exploiting these subsidies?

Yes. They will be subsidized, just like other food-based welfare programs.

As for the rich, is this really your concern? A few rich people getting some cheaper groceries is so bad that we have to deny poor people from getting affordable food? Why do so many Americans hate poor people? You know there's literally trillions of waste in agriculture, military, pharmaceutical, oil, etc... subsidies and that's just the tip of the ice berg if you examine the tax code. If you're deeply concerned about rich people gaming the system, why don't you start in those places and then when we figure that out, we can worry about rich people shopping in one of five total grocery stores.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#167

Post by wenc »

bastawhiz wrote: post #25
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?

> and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers This is the same trickle down economics principle that has proven not to work over, and over, and over again. There's exactly zero reason to believe these businesses would pass on the savings to consumers. Consider! Ingles (a supermarket brand here in NC) is criticized for holding huge amounts of abandoned/vacant/dilapidated properties [0], which stifles c…

You're thinking a tax break which is an unconditional subsidy. That relies on the business passing savings through which folks are right to be skeptical about.

But that's not all subsidy mechanisms. The best ones are where pass-through is enforced, not assumed.

You already know of one that works: WIC. It lowers the effective price for customer, which the store receives as reimbursement.

It's not about trickle-down -- that's ideology. It's more about designing the right mechanism.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#168

Post by WalterBright »

ceejayoz wrote: post #153
WalterBright wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 o…

> Two-thirds of that has gone to the richest 1% of the world’s people

Their wealth was not transferred to them, they created the wealth.

> billionaires are a third richer now than they were before the pandemic

That gives zero information about the non-billionaires.

66% of the federal budget goes to entitlements (welfare, medicare, social security, etc.). Not to rich people.

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

Inflation is the result of government deficit spending, not rich people.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#169

Post by cherry_tree »

halflife wrote: post #77
lexicality wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Won’t a better option be subsidizing taxes for grocery stores, and let the discounts competitively pass unto the customers? I'm sure this time trickle-down economics will work and not simply line the pockets of business owners

When you have a highly competitive market with plenty of actors lower cost does trickle down. Otherwise you’re talking about an extremely complicated cartel which cannot exist.

Do we have a highly competitive market? If so how do we measure that? If not how do we create one?

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#170

Post by kennywinker »

fortran77 wrote: post #132
kennywinker wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A gov run grocery store will have to pay rent and taxes. The only difference is it doesn’t have to make profits to pay its owners. The question is, why are you prioritizing being “fair” to people profiting off hunger, over being fair to working people trying to eat? Even if it is “unfair” this is a kind of unfair we should all support (assuming it succeeds at feeding people).

The working people who own grocery stores and bodegas are trying to eat.

Afaik bodegas make most of their money from cigarettes and booze, so this is unlikely to cut into their income in any real way. As for grocery stores owned and operated by the people who work in them, there aren’t many of those but I would expect they’ll be aware of that and open these gov stores far away from small local grocers (who tend to have cheap food already).

As for people who own grocery stores and don’t work in them? That’s an investment not a job, gov has no duty to protect individual investments over people’s basic needs.

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