Mamdani’s Grocery Stores Violate Civil Rights of Minority-Owned Businesses, New Suit Claims

A number of minority-owned businesses in underserved communities Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he wants to provide with low-cost, whole foods are taking their objections to a New York state court, alleging that they stand to lose out once the city’s first municipal grocery store opens.A class action filed Monday by the Multicultural Business Coalition says the mayor’s program denies them equal protection under the law and violates New York’s civil rights law by setting up shop near dozens of small, immigrant, and minority-owned businesses and offering taxpayer-subsidized discounts far outside private retailers’ reach. The suit says “hundreds of grocers, many of them smaller grocery stores/bodega/supermarkets” will be affected by the state-sponsored gastronom in their neighborhood.“There is no existing evidence that the Defendants have undertaken any studies and/or any serious analysis before its current arbitrary site selection, of the effect that said competition will have on businesses, many of which are owed by minority groups that are historically excluded by the City of New York from economic opportunities,” the complaint reads. The mayor’s office has dedicated $70 million to its NYC Groceries Program, with plans to pour $30 million into its first location at La Marqueta in East Harlem. Mr. Mamdani has promised that goods including milk, bread, eggs, produce, meat, and seafood will routinely cost almost a third less at the city’s grocery stores than at private competitors’ shops, enabled by the city shouldering overhead costs including rent and construction.“Right now they’re putting down the cost 30 percent. We only make in profit three percent, so there’s no way,” Multicultural Business Coalition Chair Frank Garcia said in a video posted earlier this month. “How do we compete against that? There’s no way to compete.”In the video, Mr. Garcia acknowledged voting for Mr. Mamdani, who also received a formal endorsement from the head of the Bodega and Small Business Association.“Right now, we feel like he lied to us, and we’re prepared to do whatever we need to do to fight,” Mr. Garcia said.Shortly after the complaint landed Monday morning, the mayor fielded questions about it during his first post-vacation press conference, downplaying the effects of the grocery program as delivering “five city-run grocery stores in a city of eight and a half million people that has more than 1,000 grocery stores.” Mr. Mamdani also pointed to the existing Essex Market and Moore Street Market — “culinary gathering places” directly overseen by the city’s Economic Development Corporation — as models of city-subsidized retailers that have “not had a negative effect on bodegas around them.”The mayor also reiterated comments members of his administration made last week about efforts to reduce the burden on food sellers. His office has identified “50 potential changes” to licensing requirements to help decrease red tape, he said, such as eliminating separate regulations for selling ice cream and hot food or selling goods inside and on the street. Nonetheless, reads the Multicultural Business Coalition’s court filing, “it is beyond debate” that the municipal grocery stores will compete with grocery stores owned by members of groups “historically discriminated against.” The suit adds that multiple Hispanic and Korean-owned stores near La Marqueta “will be put out of business resulting in further exclusion of minority groups that are historically excluded by the City of New York from economic opportunities.”

Mamdani’s Grocery Stores Violate Civil Rights of Minority-Owned Businesses, New Suit Claims

Mamdani’s Grocery Stores Violate Civil Rights of Minority-Owned Businesses, New Suit Claims

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