New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced a city-owned grocery store program offering a “core basket” of essential items—fresh produce, meat, seafood, cheese, milk and bread—at 30% below typical retail prices once monthly across five locations.
Ezra Levant, host of The Ezra Levant Show, detailed the economic challenges of the plan during his Tuesday broadcast. Levant noted that grocery store margins typically run at about 1-2%, leaving no room for a 30% discount without significant taxpayer burden. “The taxpayer will fund the gap,” he stated, explaining how the city’s subsidies would push prices below cost.
The analysis highlighted a critical issue: removing price signals from markets. Without them, Levant explained, shortages would lead to lineups, sellouts, insider skimming and resellers. He referenced Boris Yeltsin’s 1989 visit to an American grocery store, where the abundance and absence of lines shocked him after a life under Soviet central planning. “He said even the Supreme Leader of the Soviet Union didn’t have such variety and choice,” Levant quoted. “His aides later said it was the final light bulb moment where he abandoned Communism.”
Levant also cited a city-subsidized grocery store in Kansas City, Missouri, launched with similar promises and millions in public investment. Footage from last year showed nearly empty shelves, a rotten smell at the entrance and no hot food or deli services. A local community leader described the store as “on life support” before becoming “damn near dead.”
The program is expected to harm New York City’s independent bodegas—corner stores run largely by new immigrants that form much of the neighborhood food retail landscape. Levant remarked, “The taxpaying bodega owner is financing his own competition.”
Mamdani’s first store is not scheduled until late 2029, with an initial capital cost of $70 million—a figure Levant stated will likely double. “Everything’s going to be over budget,” he warned, predicting results as poor as the Kansas City grocery store.
The program’s shelves are expected to go empty due to political pricing decisions rather than economic ones. As Levant concluded: “New Yorkers are about to get a billion-dollar education in supply and demand.”
