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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

#171

Post by bastawhiz »

kennywinker wrote: post #69
bastawhiz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USSR has tried this. Lets not. The USSR fell before I spoke my first words. The world is a very different place, and the United States works very differently from the USSR. At worst, some people will get some cheaper groceries out of this. If you want to get mad about government spending, maybe we shouldn't be building a ballroom attached to the White House.

*bunker. Sounds like it’s a bunker of some kind, and the ballroom was just a cover story ( https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... )

Even better. Because lord knows we need the guy who started all these wars protected from their potential consequences.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#172

Post by rsynnott »

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.

What’s a ‘luxury neighborhood’? In any large city, most central areas are generally a bit of a mix; “this is only for rich/poor people” is more of a suburban phenomenon. If the shops are only catering to the high end, a problem can develop.

(I am less sure why this happens to such a great extent in large US cities vs elsewhere, vs more of a balance of shops, but it does seem to.)

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#173

Post by ModernMech »

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?

Who knows, let's try it and see. I've heard all my life about how new ideas are potentially not economically viable, so we keep trying old ideas which proven not economically viable. My feeling is that the economy is such a large, chaotic, dynamic system that most people, including experts, have no idea what is theoretically viable or not viable. So making decisions based on "my first order analysis is that this is not economically viable" is misguided. You have to try it first and see how the system actually responds.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#174

Post by ModernMech »

WalterBright wrote: post #168
ceejayoz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What exactly did the 1% do to "create the wealth"?

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#175

Post by ModernMech »

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?

Rich people hate being seen with us poors. Just look at Coachella, they can't even do it for a weekend. Really, that's enough to keep them out. You seriously think they're going to give up Trader Joes and Wholefoods to save 50 cents on their beef?

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#176

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #50
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.

"Hey, let's try something new!" without a plan for success is just a recipe for failure. I honestly don't understand the desire for municipal grocery stores at all. Grocery stores famously operate on super slim margins, so it's not like they're raking in the dough. Many of them are often run extremely well. In Texas, HEB is so beloved that a lot of people consider it far better at disaster recovery operations than th…

[deleted]

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#177

Post by euroderf »

I visited Soviet Estonia in 1987, on an overnight from Helsinki. A treasured purchase was a simple stamped metal bottle opener. Even the price was stamped: 15 kopecks.

This told me that for the very simplest consumer items, they might easily be contracted out and sold at just above production cost. Consumers would be free to buy fancier bottle openers, but sometimes a hunk of stamped metal does the trick.

Likewise for many other consumer basics ? Like, a Gotham store brand ?

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#178

Post by AnimalMuppet »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #50
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.

"Hey, let's try something new!" without a plan for success is just a recipe for failure. I honestly don't understand the desire for municipal grocery stores at all. Grocery stores famously operate on super slim margins, so it's not like they're raking in the dough. Many of them are often run extremely well. In Texas, HEB is so beloved that a lot of people consider it far better at disaster recovery operations than th…

There are two errors.

Error 1: "Something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done." Yeah, but "this" is something stupid, with no real-world chance of working.

Error 2: "We will not do anything until we can prove that it will work." You can analyze things to death and waste years in the process, and never do anything.

Somewhere in between is the right answer. You see plausible success, but still far from certain. Then you experiment.

Now, is New York striking the right balance? I have no idea. I'm not privy to their internal discussions. But I know that, if it fails, everyone is going to mock them for trying. That is, everyone is going to assume they fell into error 1. But did they? Getting the balance right still means that the experiments fail a fair amount of the time.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#179

Post by ModernMech »

oa335 wrote: post #128
woodruffw wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying theory is to put these stores in areas that otherwise lack grocery store access, meaning they won’t compete with existing stores for small margins. Running at a (moderate) loss would also be politically acceptable; the city runs a lot of things at a loss for civic purposes and fills the gaps with taxes. (This is the theory, the practice will be challenged by NYC’s ability to acquire land in neighborhoo…

> The underlying theory is to put these stores in areas that otherwise lack grocery store access, I’m generally partial to that motivation - however doesn’t seem to be happening here. This location (La Marqueta) is within a couple hundred feet of a "City Fresh Market" grocery store and ~1500 from several other grocery stores https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+store/@40.7983886...

But if you're running a pilot, wouldn't you want it near some other store to see what the impact on their business actually is? Running a pilot in the middle of nowhere would say nothing about how it impacts other local stores. You'd end up having to run another pilot to answer that question.

Re: NYC to open municipal grocery store in 2027

#180

Post by j_w »

energy123 wrote: post #65
legobmw99 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not putting a municipal grocery store on the same block as an existing big box and saying “wow, savings!” Food deserts exist in NYC, and many New Yorkers buy staples at corner stores that charge significantly more than a standard grocery store. Your second paragraph implies that this policy is due to some dislike of existing grocery stores, but that assumes these communities are actually being currently served…

Those corner stores exist in a perfectly competitive market, they have low turnover so they have to charger higher prices to pay staff wages and rent. There are no abnormal profits. Why would you set up a government run store with more operational inefficiencies and less ability to respond to the local knowledge problem, than like give money or food stamps to people in these areas, or use the money in some other way?

There is no such thing as a perfectly competitive market. I don't understand why people on HN are obsessed with this term. It strictly cannot exist in the real world.

A perfectly competitive market requires the following (this is not everything, just some):

- Supply perfectly meets demand (yep already wrong here)

- Marginal costs equal to average revenue (this means there should be effectively 0 profit for the seller)

- Zero transaction costs

- Zero externalities (can't exist)

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