COULD GOVT OWNED GROCERY STORES COME TO YOUR TOWN?

From transportation and childcare to housing and even the food people put on their tables, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani made affordability the centerpiece of his winning campaign. One of Mamdani’s key campaign proposals is a plan to open five city-owned grocery stores to help lower costs for people with limited access to supermarkets. While the concept might sound novel, it has been done before. “Actually, Donald Trump runs 240 public supermarkets across the world at military bases,” Professor Nevin Cohen of the Urban Food Policy Institute at the City University of New York explains. Municipal-owned grocery stores have been launched in cities as big as Atlanta and as small as St. Paul, Kansas, which has a population of around 600 people. With the high cost of living a top issue nationwide, could government-owned grocery stores be coming to your town?