The time has come for city-owned groceries

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced in April plans to create a city-owned grocery store in East Harlem, Manhattan, the first of five such stores planned for each borough. The stores will feature union labor, lower prices on staple goods, and no lottery or tobacco sales, targeting low-income, low-access communities like the predominantly Latino East Harlem neighborhood. The initiative represents a system change approach to addressing affordability and food insecurity crises across the nation.

As advocates for progressive social policy, we found it rare and promising good news when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced in April that he plans to create a city-owned grocery in East Harlem, Manhattan. The East Harlem store will be the first of five planned city-owned stores, one in each borough. And Mamdani aims to do it right — with union labor, lower prices on staple goods, and the absence of lottery and tobacco sales. Plus, the East Harlem store will be in a predominantly Latino neighborhood and, like all the planned stores, will bring affordable food to a low-income, low-access LILA community. The project marks a system change approach to tackling the nation’s affordability and food insecurity crises. It is consistent with the vision of a more democratic economy that The Democracy Collaborative, a research-led change agent where we are fellows, has been pursuing for years. A democratic economy approach — what we like to call a Next System— means that basic economic institutions are designed to serve the public good through their normal functioning, like stor