New York City—where takeout is a food group and ovens are for storing clothes—may soon get into the grocery business. If he wins the general election this November, Zohran Mamdani, the new Democratic nominee for mayor, has said he will build a network of municipally owned, affordable grocery stores, one in each of the city’s five boroughs. According to Mamdani, the city could help pay for the stores’ rent and operating costs by taxing the wealthy, and the stores won’t seek to turn a profit, enabling them to sell food at wholesale cost. In the vision Mamdani laid out in a campaign video, the stores’ mission would be combatting “price gouging” by offering lower prices than corporate grocery stores.
纽约市（Takeout）是一个食品集团，而烤箱则用于储存衣服 - 很快就会开始杂货业务。如果他今年11月赢得了大选，则为市长的新民主党候选人佐兰·曼达尼（Zohran Mamdani）表示，他将建立一个由市政拥有的，负担得起的杂货店的网络，这是该市五个行政区中的每一个。根据Mamdani的说法，纽约市可以通过征税来帮助商店的租金和运营费用，而商店不会寻求盈利，使他们能够以批发费用出售食品。在Mamdani在竞选视频中阐述的愿景中，该商店的任务将通过提供比公司杂货店低的价格来打击“价格欺诈”。
If Mamdani is able to pull this off—a huge if, given the economic considerations, as critics are quick to point out—it will be the first time in American history that a city of New York’s size has commanded its own grocery stores. New Yorkers are in favor of the idea: Two-thirds of them, including 54 percent of Republicans, support public groceries, according to a March poll by the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank. But because nothing exactly like Mamdani’s plan has ever been tried before in a large city, no one can be certain whether it will really be able to sell more affordable food, let alone help address food insecurity and health disparities in the city. What Mamdani has proposed is a $60 million experiment, with New Yorkers as test subjects.
如果Mamdani能够实现这一目标 - 如果考虑到经济考虑，那么批评家很快就会指出，这是一项巨大的事情 - 这将是美国历史上第一次纽约市规模的人命令自己的杂货店。纽约人赞成这一想法：根据渐进式智囊团气候和社区研究所的三月民意调查，其中包括54％的共和党人支持公共杂货。但是，由于没有像Mamdani的计划那样在一个大城市曾经尝试过的，所以没有人能确定它是否真的能够出售更多负担得起的食物，更不用说有助于解决该市的粮食不安全和健康差异。Mamdani提出的是一项耗资6000万美元的实验，纽约人是测试对象。
A couple of other large American cities are trying out similar plans, but what little real precedent exists for Mamdani’s plan comes mostly from rural America. A handful of towns have opened municipally owned groceries, mostly because they had no choice: Small towns once relied on mom-and-pop shops, but these are vanishing as dollar stores proliferate and big-box retailers in larger rural cities monopolize the wholesale supply. Without a supermarket, residents have to either drive out of town for food or rely on convenience stores and dollar stores, which don’t stock many healthy options. In 2018, the town of Baldwin, Florida (current population 1,366), lost its only grocery when the local IGA closed. It became a food desert: The next-closest supermarket was 10 miles away—not a simple trip for older adults who don’t drive or for people without a car. The mayor proposed a municipally owned store, which opened the next year. In Kansas, the cities of St. Paul (population 603) and Erie (population 1,019) started their own grocery stores in 2008 and 2021, respectively. St. Paul had not had a supermarket since 1985.
其他几个大型城市正在尝试类似的计划，但是Mamdani计划的真正先例几乎没有来自美国农村。少数城镇已经开设了市政拥有的杂货，主要是因为它们别无选择：曾经依靠妈妈的小镇，但随着较大农村城市中的Dollar Stores繁殖和大型零售商的销售，这些杂货正在消失。没有一家超市，居民不得不开车去城镇供食物，或者依靠便利店和美元商店，而便利店和美元商店不会有很多健康的选择。2018年，佛罗里达州鲍德温镇（当前人口1,366）在当地IGA关闭时失去了唯一的杂货店。它变成了食物沙漠：隔壁的超级市场距离酒店10英里，这对于不开车或没有汽车的人来说，这并不是一个简单的旅行。市长提出了一家市政拥有的商店，该商店于明年开业。在堪萨斯州，圣保罗的城市（人口603）和伊利（人口1,019）分别于2008年和2021年成立了自己的杂货店。自1985年以来，圣保罗就一直没有超市。
The fates of these stores and their hometowns have varied. Baldwin Market became a lifeline for many residents, particularly during the pandemic. But it struggled to break even and closed in 2024. Now the town largely relies on a handful of convenience stores and a Dollar General as it awaits the rumored opening of a new private grocery. Erie Market similarly struggled to balance its books. Operations were a challenge; the store sometimes stocked expired food, and its refrigerated section lost power after a thunderstorm. Last year, the city leased it to a private owner, who has yet to reopen the store.
这些商店及其家乡的命运各不相同。鲍德温市场成为许多居民的生命线，尤其是在大流行期间。但是它在2024年努力打破并关闭。现在，该镇在很大程度上依靠了一些便利店和一家美元将军，因为它正在等待传闻开设新的私人杂货店。伊利市场同样努力平衡其书籍。操作是一个挑战；这家商店有时会库存过期的食物，其冷藏部分雷暴后失去了动力。去年，该市将其租给了尚未重新开业的私人所有者。
By contrast, St. Paul Supermarket has operated as a fully municipally owned grocery since 2013 (before that, it was funded by a community-development group) and shows no signs of closing. Its success has been attributed to community buy-in. Locals were motivated by the desire to preserve their city, fearing that the lack of a grocery store would drive away current residents and scare off potential new ones. “It’s a retention strategy, but it’s also a recruitment strategy,” Rial Carver, the program leader at Kansas State University’s Rural Grocery Initiative, told me.
相比之下，圣保罗超市自2013年以来一直是全市拥有的杂货店（在此之前，它是由社区发展集团资助的），并且没有结束的迹象。它的成功归因于社区买入。当地人的动机是为了保护自己的城市的愿望，担心缺乏杂货店会驱逐现有居民并吓到潜在的新居民。堪萨斯州立大学农村杂货倡议的计划负责人里亚尔·卡弗（Rial Carver）告诉我：“这是一种保留策略，但也是招聘策略。”
The primary goal of a municipally owned store is to get food to people who need it. But the city will have to decide which food to stock and, inevitably, will face questions about how those choices influence the diet or health of potential customers. (Imagine the criticism a Mamdani administration might face for subsidizing Cheetos—or, for that matter, organic, gluten-free cheese puffs.) Theoretically, getting people better access to any sort of food can have health benefits, Craig Willingham, the managing director of CUNY’s Urban Food Policy Institute, told me. But so few examples of successful municipal grocery stores exist that there is virtually no research on their health effects.
一家市拥有的商店的主要目标是将食物提供给需要它的人。但是，该市将不得不决定库存哪种食物，不可避免地会面临有关这些选择如何影响潜在客户饮食或健康的问题。（想象一下，Mamdani政府可能会面临补贴Cheetos的批评，或者是这样，或者是有机的，无麸质的奶酪泡芙。）从理论上讲，让人们更好地使用任何类型的食物可以获得健康益处，Craig the Me。但是，很少有成功的市政杂货店的实例，几乎没有对其健康影响的研究。
Research on the health impact of opening a privately owned grocery in a food desert has had mixed results. An ongoing study of a food-desert neighborhood in Pittsburgh has found that after a supermarket opened, residents consumed fewer calories overall—less added sugar, but also fewer whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. A 2018 study set in a Bronx neighborhood with few grocery stores linked the opening of a new supermarket to residents eating more vegetables and fruit and consuming fewer soft drinks, salty snacks, and pastries, but their spending on unhealthy foods increased along with their purchases of healthy ones.
关于在食品沙漠中开设私人杂货店的健康影响的研究结果不同。一项对匹兹堡一家食品饮食社区的一项正在进行的研究发现，一家超市开业后，居民总体上消耗的卡路里较少 - 添加了糖，但全谷物，水果和蔬菜也更少。2018年在布朗克斯社区设定的一项研究，杂货店很少，将一家新超市的开业与居民开放，居民吃更多的蔬菜，水果，少量的软饮料，咸味小吃和糕点，但他们在不健康食品上的支出随着健康食品的购买而增加。
A new grocery alone won’t change food habits, according to a 2019 study led by Hunt Allcott, an economist at Stanford. “People shop at the new store, but they buy the same kinds of groceries they had been buying before,” Allcott told me. What does help nudge people toward buying healthier foods, he said, is making those foods affordable—while also taxing unhealthy items such as soda.
根据斯坦福大学经济学家亨特·阿尔科特（Hunt Allcott）领导的一项2019年研究，仅一家新杂货就不会改变粮食习惯。“人们在新商店购物，但他们购买了以前购买的杂货，” Allcott告诉我。他说，什么可以帮助人们购买更健康的食物，使这些食物负担得起 - 同时还要对苏打水等不健康的食物征税。
With so little background information to go on, there’s no telling how Mamdani’s experiment will play out in a big city—or whether it will even get off the ground. New York differs from the sites of other municipal-grocery experiments not only in its size and density but also in its general abundance of grocery stores. Proximity isn’t the major reason people can’t get food, healthy or otherwise, Allcott said—cost is. From 2013 to 2023, the amount of money New Yorkers spent on groceries rose nearly 66 percent—far higher than the national average. The city’s poverty rate—a metric based on the price of a minimal diet—is nearly twice that of the national average; from 2020 to 2023, one in three New Yorkers used food pantries. In Chelsea, a Manhattan neighborhood that is known for its luxury high-rises and is also home to a large housing project, some residents would rather take the train into New Jersey to buy groceries than shop at the expensive local supermarkets, Willingham said.
有了很少的背景信息，就无法说明Mamdani的实验将如何在一个大城市进行，或者它是否会脱离地面。纽约与其他市政杂货实验的地点不同，不仅在其规模和密度方面，而且在其一般丰富的杂货店中也有所不同。Allcott说，接近并不是人们无法获得健康或以其他方式获得食物的主要原因 - 成本是。从2013年到2023年，纽约人花在杂货上的金额增长了近66％，高于全国平均水平。该市的贫困率是基于最低饮食的价格的度量，几乎是全国平均水平的两倍；从2020年到2023年，纽约人中有三分之一使用食品储藏室。在切尔西（Chelsea），以其豪华的高层建筑而闻名，也是一个大型住房项目的所在地，一些居民宁愿乘火车去新泽西州购买杂货，而不是在昂贵的当地超市购物。
Grocery stores are tough business. Profit margins are as slim as 1 to 3 percent, and prices are largely determined by suppliers, who tend to privilege volume. A single grocer (or the small network that Mamdani envisions) won’t get as good a deal as a large chain. And running a store is hard, Carver told me: A manager needs to be nimble and adjust to customer demands, skills that municipal bodies are not exactly known for. In New York, at least, there’s reason to expect that public groceries wouldn’t actually be cheaper.
杂货店是艰难的业务。利润率较小，高达1％至3％，而且价格在很大程度上由倾向于特权的供应商确定。单个杂货店（或Mamdani设想的小型网络）不会像大型连锁店那样获得好的交易。卡弗告诉我，经营一家商店很难：经理需要敏捷，适应客户的需求，即市政机构并不完全闻名的技能。至少在纽约，有理由期望公共杂货实际上不会更便宜。
Mamdani (whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment) has acknowledged that New York’s city government might not be cut out for stocking shelves. If the pilot plan doesn’t work, he said on the podcast Plain English last week, he won’t try to scale it up. Yet he believes that it’s worth trying. “This is a proposal of reasonable policy experimentation,” he said.
Mamdani（其竞选活动没有回应置评请求）承认，纽约市政府可能不会因储存货架而被削减。他在上周的播客平原英语中说，如果飞行员计划不起作用，他将不会试图扩大规模。但是他认为值得尝试。他说：“这是合理的政策实验的建议。”
National grocery costs are expected to increase 2.2 percent this year, according to the USDA. Price hikes will hit poor Americans even harder if Congress passes President Donald Trump’s megabill, which includes cuts to federal food-assistance programs such as SNAP. Among such threats to food affordability, the mere possibility of change could justify a trial of something new. Other large cities, too, are signing up as guinea pigs: Madison, Wisconsin, is in the process of opening a municipally owned store. Last year, Atlanta addressed food insecurity among public-school students and their families by opening a free grocery store—it functions like a food pantry but is stocked like a supermarket—funded by a public-private partnership. Its impact on health hasn’t yet been studied, but demand is high. “We do slots for appointments, and they’re immediately gone,” Chelsea Montgomery, the adviser to operations of Atlanta Public Schools, told me.
根据美国农业部的数据，今年国家杂货成本预计将增加2.2％。如果国会通过唐纳德·特朗普总统的大型大型巨人，价格上涨将击中贫穷的美国人，其中包括削减诸如SNAP之类的联邦食品辅助计划。在这种对粮食可承受能力的威胁中，仅仅变革的可能性可以证明对新事物的审判是合理的。其他大城市也正在签约，作为豚鼠：威斯康星州麦迪逊，正在开设一家市政拥有的商店。去年，亚特兰大通过开设一家免费杂货店来解决公立学校学生及其家人之间的粮食不安全，它的功能像食品储藏室，但库存像一家超市一样，由公私合作伙伴资金资助。它对健康的影响尚未得到研究，但需求很高。亚特兰大公立学校运营顾问切尔西·蒙哥马利（Chelsea Montgomery）告诉我：“我们做了任命的老虎机，他们立即消失了。”
Mamdani’s proposal is hardly the first unorthodox policy experiment New York has considered. The city took a chance on congestion pricing to reduce traffic and fund public transit, on universal pre-K to guarantee access to early childhood education, and on supervised injection sites to curb the overdose crisis. All have achieved their objectives. Perhaps, in a decade, millions of New Yorkers will get their organic, gluten-free cheese puffs on the cheap at a city-owned market. Or perhaps the whole project will go the way of the city’s failed attempt to end poverty by offering cash in exchange for efforts to build healthy habits. The point of experimentation is to find out.
Mamdani的提议并不是纽约考虑的第一个非正统政策实验。该市借此机会进行了拥挤定价，以减少交通和资助公共交通，普遍的Pre-K，以确保获得幼儿教育的机会以及监督的注射现场以遏制过量的危机。所有人都实现了他们的目标。也许在十年内，数以百万计的纽约人将在城市拥有的市场上便宜地获得有机的，无麸质的奶酪泡芙。也许整个项目将通过提供现金来换取养成健康习惯的努力来消除城市失败的尝试。实验的目的是找出答案。
