Where's the Business Plan for Mamdani's Free Grocery Scheme?

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By Duvi Honig Wednesday, 19 August 2026 03:49 PM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

Bankers. By the very instinctive nature of their occupation, they are prudent enough to ask a prospective commercial borrower for their business plan.

If you walked into a bank asking for $70 million without such a plan, you’d be shown the door.

No lender would finance you.
No investor would write the check.
No board of directors would approve the deal.

Yet that’s exactly what New York taxpayers are being asked to do.

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New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants the city to spend $70 million to launch five government-backed grocery stores.

The 112th mayor of the Big Apple says the goal is to save participating families about $90 a month on essential groceries.

Sure, helping families afford food is a goal every New Yorker can support. But spending taxpayer dollars without proving it’s the smartest way to achieve that goal is something entirely different.

Here’s the question every taxpayer should be asking: How many families will this $70 million actually help?

Despite announcing the project, promoting the expected savings, and unveiling store locations, City Hall has not publicly stated how many households these five stores are expected to serve.

That omission matters because without that number there is no meaningful way to judge whether this is a sound investment or an expensive experiment.

We do know one thing.

If the objective is putting $90 a month back into family budgets, then the initial $70 million alone could fund nearly 778,000 monthly grocery benefits before a single dollar is spent on salaries, utilities, insurance, maintenance, security, technology, legal fees, consultants, inventory losses or future operating subsidies.

And that’s where the economics begin to fall apart.

The $70 million isn’t the total cost.

It’s the down payment.

Once the stores open, taxpayers will still be responsible for the ongoing costs of operating a grocery business — one of the most competitive and lowest-margin industries in America.

Every payroll check, electric bill, maintenance contract, insurance premium, operating loss and additional subsidy is money that no longer helps struggling families buy food. It helps sustain the government program itself.

Imagine taking those same public dollars and putting them directly into the hands of New Yorkers instead.

Families could shop where they already shop — whether that’s ShopRite, Costco, Key Food, Aldi, their neighborhood supermarket or the local bodega.

Consumers would have immediate relief.

Small businesses would keep their customers.

Competition would continue working. And nearly every taxpayer dollar intended for grocery assistance would reach a family’s shopping cart instead of being absorbed by bureaucracy.

This isn’t an argument against helping struggling New Yorkers.

It’s an argument for helping more of them.

Government has an obligation to ask the same question every successful business asks before spending money: Is this the most efficient way to achieve the objective?

If the answer is yes, then prove it.

Publish the business plan.

Tell taxpayers how many families the stores are expected to serve.

Show the projected operating costs.

Explain how the stores become financially sustainable.

Demonstrate why this approach delivers greater value than direct grocery assistance.

That’s not politics. That’s accountability.

Good intentions don’t balance budgets.

Promises don’t replace financial projections.

Taxpayers should never be expected to invest $70 million on faith alone.

Helping families is the right goal.

But if city hall can’t show why five government grocery stores are a better investment than putting grocery assistance directly into the hands of New Yorkers, taxpayers have every right to ask whether this plan is about feeding families — or feeding another layer of government.

Before New York spends $70 million, it deserves something every entrepreneur is expected to produce before asking for even a fraction of that amount: a business plan.

Duvi Honig is founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce and founder of JBizNews. Read more Duvi Honig Insider articles —Click Here Now.

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Where's the Business Plan for Mamdani's Free Grocery Scheme?

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