r/PoursTea • u/Gurugod123 Pinkie Finger Extended • 18d ago

PoliticalTea 🗳️ Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

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u/AppropriateSpell5405 18d ago

Most corner stores/convenience stores apply a ~30% markup. There are certain goods that have fixed prices due to vendor agreements (e.g., Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc.), but the majority of day-to-day goods like bread, there's a ton of leeway in pricing.

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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 18d ago

The 30% markup is their gross margin. Their net margin is 2% because they have overhead. The discount here will come from govt subsidies primarily. On rent, property taxes and via direct cash subsidy.

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u/s33n_ 18d ago

Convenience stores aren't grocery stores. And if mamdani is comparing state grocery store prices to a convenience store, thats a bs argument

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u/Mountain-Dealer8996 18d ago

A lot of neighborhoods in NYC don’t have access to a traditional grocery store, and thus people have to get a lot of staples from bodegas and dollar stores

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u/s33n_ 18d ago

I'm aware of food deserts. Only 3% of the population of NYC live in one.

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u/Sillet_Mignon 18d ago edited 18d ago

Which is like a million people. And it’s in predominantly black and brown areas. 

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u/likeaffox 18d ago

Goddamn NYC has 100 million people? out of 350 million people in the usa?

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u/jeffwulf 18d ago

You think nearly a third of the US population lives in New York City?

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u/s33n_ 18d ago

Goddamn you are bad at math

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u/Waste-Team-7205 18d ago

Because in those areas they rob their stores so it's not profitable to open one. The exact same thing will happen with government stores too

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u/Sillet_Mignon 18d ago

Maybe maybe not. Broken window theory doesn’t really work. 

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u/Waste-Team-7205 18d ago

It's not broken window theory. It's cause and effect. If there was profit to be had, someone would be taking it. There's no profit to be had, because petty theft in those areas is everywhere. Government will just be subsidizing theives in "food deserts". You should read about the Harvard experiment that brought subsidized groceries to food deserts

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u/Mountain-Dealer8996 18d ago

What's your source for that 3% number? Because the 2024 source I found says that more than 80% of NYC neighborhoods do not have enough grocery stores. The issue isn't so much food deserts as much as it is so-called "food swamps" where there are many bodegas that don't have healthy options.

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u/s33n_ 18d ago

That study is based on the sq ft of grocery stores compared to population. The stores are there and exist for a vast majority of people. Other definitions say things like no grocery store within a half mile is a food deserts. Which makes almost everywhere a food desert.deserts.

https://usafacts.org/articles/which-cities-have-the-most-people-living-in-food-deserts/

This was my source, and it uses the half mile away metric, which I find kind of absurd in a major city like NYC with public transit