New York City's plan to open five taxpayer-funded grocery stores with rent-free, tax-free leases has drawn sharp criticism from one of the city's longest-running grocery executives, who says the mayor is "competing against your own citizens."
John Catsimatidis, CEO of the Gristedes supermarket chain, told Fox News Digital that Mayor Zohran Mamdani's plan to open government-run grocery stores in all five boroughs will not feed hungry New Yorkers, it will undercut the private businesses already doing that work. The city has committed $70 million in capital funding, promised to cover property taxes and rent at each location, and pledged a 30 percent discount on a core basket of everyday groceries including meat, seafood, and fresh produce.
Catsimatidis says those subsidies hand the city-run stores an advantage no private grocer can match, and the people who will pay the price are the bodega owners and independent supermarket operators already serving those same neighborhoods.
Mamdani announced the grocery plan in July, setting the first store in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx with a target opening of late 2027. The administration's goal is to have all five stores running before his term ends in 2030. The city is currently accepting applications from private operators to handle the day-to-day logistics of running the stores.
The mayor framed the initiative as a response to rising food costs.
"Every week, New Yorkers walk into a grocery store hoping the prices haven't gone up again. A trip to the grocery store shouldn't spell dread for New Yorkers."
But Catsimatidis argues the math behind the discount tells a different story. He pointed out that the average grocery store operates on a profit margin of just 1 to 3 percent. A store that pays no rent and no property taxes can slash prices by roughly 20 percent across the board, he said, a margin no taxpaying competitor can absorb.
"The people that are going to run those five stores are not going to pay any [real estate taxes]. Not going to pay any rent. If I don't pay any rent or real estate taxes, I can bring down the cost of a product 20% across the board."
That 20 percent advantage comes before the city layers on its promised 30 percent discount. For a bodega owner paying full freight on rent, taxes, insurance, and delivery surcharges, the competition is not just steep, it is structurally impossible to match.
An immigrant business coalition has already voted to sue the city over the $70 million grocery program, adding a legal dimension to the growing backlash.
Catsimatidis did not limit his criticism to the competitive imbalance. He questioned whether five stores, one per borough, can meaningfully address food insecurity in a city of more than eight million people.
"The big picture is that five stores in five boroughs is only good for public relations, and it's not really going to help the hungry."
He offered an alternative: let the city issue tax credits to existing private grocers in exchange for lowering prices on staple items. The mechanism, he argued, would reach far more neighborhoods without putting the government in direct competition with the people it governs.
"If you want me to lower the price of eggs, well maybe I'll lower the price of the eggs by a dollar a dozen. But maybe [the city] will give me a dollar a dozen credit toward my real estate taxes."
The city already has a framework for that kind of incentive. Nevin Cohen, director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital that New York's existing FRESH program provides tax incentives and zoning incentives to encourage new supermarkets or the expansion of existing ones in neighborhoods deemed underserved by food retail. Catsimatidis's proposal would extend that logic to price relief rather than new construction.
Mamdani has faced a string of public setbacks beyond the grocery fight. A New York judge blocked his pied-à-terre tax after homeowners sued over its rollout, adding to the legal and political headwinds against his administration's agenda.
Catsimatidis also connected the grocery plan to another policy burden on city businesses: Manhattan's congestion pricing, enacted in January 2025. The toll applies to deliveries traveling south of 61st Street, and Catsimatidis said vendors now charge 10 to 15 percent more for shipments into the city from New Jersey, Nassau County, Suffolk County, and the outer boroughs.
"If I want stuff delivered to us from vendors in New Jersey, and all these companies are in New Jersey, Nassau, Suffolk County, Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx, and I say to them, 'I want you to deliver to [New York City],' they're going to charge me 10% more, or 15% more."
The combined effect, he argued, is a city government that raises operating costs on private grocers through congestion tolls, then undercuts those same grocers with subsidized competitors. He said the result is visible on the streets: roughly half the storefronts in New York City sit empty.
The grocery chain executive is not the only New Yorker who has pushed back publicly against Mamdani. A Staten Island crowd booed the mayor off stage at an NYPD celebration earlier this year, reflecting a broader pattern of public frustration with his administration.
Cohen, the CUNY food policy director, acknowledged the scale of the problem Mamdani says he wants to solve. He told Fox News Digital that 1.4 million New Yorkers are food insecure, meaning they are unsure whether they have enough money to put food on the table. Twenty percent of the city's residents depend on SNAP benefits or other federal food subsidies.
"The problem is that many people can't afford food for their families. 1.4 million New Yorkers are [food insecure], which means that they're unsure whether they have enough money to put food on the table."
Those numbers are real. But Catsimatidis's point is that the proposed solution, five government-run stores operating on a playing field no private business can access, does not scale to the size of the crisis. Five stores cannot serve 1.4 million people. And if the stores succeed in pulling customers away from nearby bodegas and supermarkets, the net effect could be fewer food options in the very neighborhoods the plan is supposed to help.
Even Mamdani's own supporters have found themselves caught in the unintended consequences of his policy ambitions, a pattern that raises questions about whether this administration thinks through second-order effects before announcing the next initiative.
Catsimatidis did not mince words about what the plan represents in principle. He framed it as a fundamental departure from the relationship between government and the private citizens it is supposed to serve.
"You're competing against your own citizens, and that's only done in socialist countries. Look at socialist countries, nobody's breaking down the walls to get in, but they're all breaking down the walls to get into the United States of America."
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani's administration for comment. The article did not indicate whether the administration responded.
Separately, a Gold Star family blocked Mamdani from speaking at a fallen soldier's funeral in Queens, another public rejection that suggests the mayor's standing with ordinary New Yorkers is eroding well beyond the grocery aisle.
When a city government uses $70 million in taxpayer money to open stores that pay no rent and no taxes, then calls it a fair fight, the question is not whether the groceries will be cheaper, it is who gets crushed to make the press release work.
