New York City will open the first of five promised subsidized grocery stores in the Manhattan neighborhood of East Harlem by 2029. Mayor Zohran Mamdani had promised one store in each of the city’s five boroughs as a way to address the city’s affordability crisis.
During a press conference, Mamdani explained that the city would subsidize a core set of staples offered on the store’s shelves, but that the store itself would be run by a private operator, to be named at a later date. Noting that grocery prices in New York City increased 66% between 2013 and 2023, significantly greater than the national average increase, Mamdani said: “Bread and eggs will be cheaper, and grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation — and the [store’s] workers will be treated with dignity.”
In addition to subsidizing a “core basket of staples, the things families absolutely need every week,” Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su also revealed that “we will listen to the community, so the food on the shelves will reflect what people in this neighborhood eat.” She added that workers in the store would enjoy union-level standards, because “addressing affordability isn’t just about bringing down the prices that working New Yorkers pay, it’s also about bringing up what they make.”
The store’s site, La Marqueta, has historic significance: legendary Depression-era Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia’s administration created it as a central market for pushcart vendors in 1936 that, at its peak, served 25,000 customers daily.
“New York City, it’s time for a grand experiment once again,” said Mamdani. “Just as LaGuardia used government to respond to the challenges of the Great Depression, we will use government to respond to rising prices and unaffordable groceries.”
