Even if we take at face value that this is happening, their margins are famously low (ie. low single digits[1][2]) that any improvements are likely negligible. In the best case scenario where they're run as competently/efficiently as a normal grocery store, but don't take any profits, you'd be saving like 50 cents on a $10 pack of ground beef. Of course, all of this would go out the window if it's less efficient, either due to government incompetence[3], or lack of scale.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ACI/albertsons/pro...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-m...
Mamdani has clearly taken lessons like these to heart.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/nyregion/how-to-build-a-r...
"The Transportation Department workers arrived at 9:15 p.m., right on time. Mr. Boyce and his crew were ready, having fitted the roof and rear wall panel 30 minutes before. By Monday, the structure was nearly complete. “This is all like synchronized swimming,” Mr. Mansylla said. “To build a structure in New York City in, what, 48 hours? That’s as fast as it gets.”
From the wikipedia article:
>The toilet's original proposed cost of $1.7 million inspired media coverage and criticism of the San Francisco government.
Was all this waived?
It's a kiosk being added to a concrete sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan, by the city itself.
There must be a way to do projects of this small scale without spending years on paperwork.
Site preparation began in February, 2024;[12] the prefabricated restroom was placed by a crane in March;[2] and installation was completed on April 22, 2024, costing about $200,000 to the city.
What's the point of this observation other than for shock value? Yes, when you multiply small percentage by a huge number, you're still left with a huge number. That doesn't mean it's suddenly worth doing unless you can make the argument that it scales easily.
>That doesn't mean it's suddenly worth doing unless you can make the argument that it scales easily.
Otherwise it's like saying "you know what everyone should do? Raise their own chickens! Sure, you might be only saving $1 or whatever a day, but multiply that 365 days per year and 340 million Americans, and that's billions we're all collectively saving!"
And no, running a grocery store isn't something that scales easily.
Usually if someone steals a millionth of that, they go to jail for a very long time.
The same players are now under investigation for selling underweight meats.
Vast majority of product sold when inventory is low, they just go out of stock still at MSRP right to the last sku in the inventory. Then, you wait until more are available, also at that same price.
Really, why would prices go up for the eggs in this situation if not for gouging? Sure plenty of chickens were culled. But the remaining chickens aren't costing more than they did before the cull. Whoever is producing the remaining eggs being produced is producing them for the exact same overhead they have always been producing. Feed is still probably the same. Maybe cheaper with an excess of feed on the market needing to be sold and moved out of feedlots before the next crop comes in, from the chicken culling your competitors were doing. Water is still probably the same. Power is still probably the same. Staff are still getting the same pay. Property taxes are still the same. Really, who is getting the $10 from the $12 dozen of eggs? Probably some guys smoking cigars if we are being honest.
Supply and demand. Just like blocking the Strait of Hormuz doesn't make oil 2x more expensive to produce everywhere else in the world, you're still left with the problem that the world has ~20% less oil to go around. That means the price of oil gets bid up until it's high enough to convince 20% of oil consumers to stop using oil.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaw-bread-price-settleme...
> The class-action case was brought against a group of companies that includes Loblaw and the Weston companies, Metro, Walmart Canada, Giant Tiger, and Sobeys and its owner, Empire Co. Ltd.
> The plaintiffs allege those companies participated in a 14-year industry-wide price-fixing conspiracy between 2001 and 2015, leading to an artificial increase in packaged bread prices.
But as others said, groceries are working on minimal margin. And all of them work with the same wholeselles (except those with vertical integrations), and this is a nation wide problem.
Not really imo. Private market passes costs to consumers and leverages subsidy offers to achieve rat race outcomes out of competing local governments off each other. It is how you end up with the classic case of a city courting some business but offering enough tax abatement where the city isn't actually getting anything out of the business, and once the abatement expire the business just leaves for somewhere else that will cut them a better deal. City ends up hostage to the business demanding ever more favorable incentives and removal of all taxes (there's been free trade zones established in the middle of ho hum suburbs, stuff brought in there doesn't even count as imported to the US).
In a highly competitive market, every cost saved would be passed to the consumer, obviously this is simplistic microeconomics and doesn’t actually works this way.
In my city, there’s a supermarket approximately every 150 meters. Food cost is high, but for the entire country. Actually research shows that food cost is higher in low density towns where there is much less competition.
Walmart has low margins. Walmart is also wildly profitable.
Or if there could be some kind of network and information protocol that could provide a decentralized alternative.
Maybe there could be an Internet protocol or NYC Internet protocol that food suppliers could list low price items with. Independent stores could order from here, shipped to their store, or maybe one or two city warehouses where they could pick up.
Maybe another system where suppliers could voluntarily detail cost disruptions, allowing government or other organizations insight and sometimes the possibility of helping alleviate those issues etc.
I mean the government already spends a lot to subsidize retail food purchases. Maybe another idea is just a very easily accessible new app for credits that is NYC only?
It's just that making a single store puts all of the logistical and other issues onto one government department and location, which has been shown in socialist countries to break down.
I am all for a few more socialist policies (I am lucky to have survived this long on outsourcing rates without a consistent healthcare plan), but it definitely needs to be a contemporary effort and not some centralized 1950s model.
I know for stuff like seafood there is a saturday night 1am fish market near our harbor where significant volume is sold wholesale to restaurants and grocers (but also individuals interested in filling a chest freezer).
So I think already there are just few places to order food wholesale in a given region so those prices are probably somewhat even. Then of course you go to vons, kroger, ralphs, save4less, the local korean grocer, and see different prices for the exact same commodified product like Cosmic crisp apple or 6 pack of coca cola, there is your markup that comes from the grocer itself on top of the regional wholesale price. Grocers like to have flexibility in markup to play psychological games like rotating sales, coupons, and offer rewards programs. Seems that sort of finagling isn't tolerated at the next level of abstraction in business to business sales.
Cost disruptions might be good to put the blame on who exactly in the chain is gouging prices. At the end of the day, the eggs in the egg shortage were not more costly to produce than beforehand. And the egg farms that were culled of their hens, were probably not that much of an anchor on operations given that they probably were not consuming their usual power, water, farmhands probably all laid off, land bought and paid for probably decades ago by this point, way out in marginal farmland where property taxes are probably quite low. Certainly not enough to quadruple the price of eggs. And how interesting how Trader Joes still sold $2.99 dozen racks during this whole crisis.
And, even if they are true, the obvious solution would be to enforce the already existing antitrust and competition laws, not to have the government directly engage in commerce.
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, however, open a municipal grocery store.
The government engages in commerce all the time. If we took that argument to its logical conclusion there would be no libraries as they compete with book stores. There would be no armies as they compete with Blackrock mercenaries. No public transit as it competes with private transit. No public events as that competes with ticketmaster. No public schools. No public universities. No scientific research grants. No sheltering or feeding the poor. No treating the sick. No treating veterans. No bridges. No roads. No harbors. No anything. What really would be the role of government after we stripped it of all its potential influences on the world of commerce? I can't even imagine what might even be left...
No, it seems a big role in this country for government is facilitating conditions for commerce. Educating the populace such as to upskill the nation's labor pool. Building roads free for businesses to use in transporting goods to market. Treating the sick before they get so ill as to be an undue burden on the medical system that threatens its entire latent capacity. Offering cheaper food seems in line with that. People aren't going to use the spare money to throw into a river; they will use their extra money to circulate back into the economy probably in more productive ways than Kroger buying back its stock or its executives or shareholders squandering it on oysters and boat fuel.
1. https://grocerynerd.substack.com/p/grocery-update-17-how-gro...
> 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 time. If we took that argument to its logical conclusion there would be no libraries as they compete with book stores. There would be no armies as they compete with Blackrock mercenaries. No public transit as it competes with private transit. No public events as that competes with ticketmaster. No public schools. No public universities. No scientific research grants. No sheltering or feeding the poor. No treating the sick. No treating veterans. No bridges. No roads. No harbors....
I do think the government should get out of many of those, so your argument doesn't really land for me.
> No, it seems a big role in this country for government is facilitating conditions for commerce.
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?
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.
Nope, poor person spends far greater share of their wealth on real items.
>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.
Ahh yes, it all trickles down. That is why wages have kept pace with inflation and why inequality has remained the same over the decades! No hoarding going on! It was right in my back pocket the whole time!
Please formally define what you believe the role of government is. I am genuinely curious on what these anarcholibertarians such as yourself actually believe in.
It seems to me both that:
1. If this article is true then independent groceries should have a slam dunk in keeping prices low. They aren't subject to the price fixing cartel of the big grocers so if they lower prices they'll drive demand to their store and win out on the market. Margins for staples are quite low anyway so volume is the best way to make profits. This means we should observe independent grocers right now outcompeting large chains or driving costs lower .
2. Alternatively if the price gouging is coming from consolidation of the CPG market then state run grocery stores will be just as ineffective at combatting high prices as independent grocers. I guess one can argue that a sufficiently large amount of state run demand can negotiate better CPG pricing but I'm not sure this experiment is big enough.to leverage this.
Personally I'm not a fan of state run businesses because the US is so polarized. Today's support can turn into tomorrow's opposition. It's hard to build a lasting institution when differences in candidates and parties can wipe out any wins or losses.
Instead I'd like to either see state subsidizing of staples and CPGs using taxes (paying into a food price stabilization fund used to negotiate and aquire staples and CPGs at cost and then resold to grocery stores at lower prices, along with maximum margin guarantees from grocery stores) or I'd like so see an incentive program for independent grocers along with a state blessed way of having disparate grocers negotiate better prices.
But I also don't live in NYC and this initiative's success or failure isn't being run on my tax money.
Certain states the government actually operates the liquor stores so this isn't wholly unprecedented. Government also does this sort of thing for armed forces. It is interesting how the US military with its associated progression, benefits, services, and provided housing, is sort of a gleam into what a communist united states might have looked like in another timeline. Kind of ironic when you get a pro military pro capitalist person I guess. They have more experience with de facto communism than most and seemed to have liked a lot of aspects.
Yup no distortions here just good old fashion free market!