Op-ed: Public Grocery Stores Already Exist and Work Well. We Need More
August 20, 2025 | Source: Civil Eats | by Raj Patel and Errol Schweizer
New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to open five city-run grocery stores has grocery industry executives—and other political foes—clutching their pearls. Critics call it a socialist fantasy. But publicly owned grocery stores already exist, serving over a million Americans every day, with prices 25 to 30 percent lower than conventional retail. We need more public grocery stores, not fewer.
The affordability crisis is crushing American families. Grocery prices have spiked 32 percent since 2019, with even sharper increases in meat, frozen foods, and snacks—categories that make up over 50 percent of Americans’ calories and are dominated by a handful of conglomerates. Market concentration has enabled food giants to raise prices, while actual consumption has flatlined since 2019.
The numbers are starker in New York, where 85 percent of New Yorkers are paying more for groceries than they did last year and 91 percent are concerned about inflation’s impact on their food bills.