A family-owned butcher shop across the street from the planned site of New York City's first taxpayer-subsidized grocery store has operated for two decades. Its co-owner now fears it won't survive what's coming.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani's flagship campaign promise, city-run grocery stores selling discounted products in all five boroughs, is taking its first concrete shape in the South Bronx. The initial location, a 20,000-square-foot lot at the Peninsula development in the Hunts Point area, is set to open by the end of 2027. And the small-business owners who built their livelihoods within a quarter mile of that site want to know why City Hall is about to become their competitor.
The Daily Mail visited six delis and bodegas near the proposed store. Five of the six shared reservations or outright opposition to the plan. Only one worker called it a good idea, and even that came with a caveat.
The co-owner of A1 Depot Butcher, a family-run shop directly opposite the planned site, declined to give her name. She told the Daily Mail she fears retaliation because local politicians back the project. But she did not hold back on the substance.
"They told me this would be good for my business. They never said anything about a grocery store."
She said she was informed about the potential benefits of the Peninsula's affordable housing development, 740 units on the campus of a former juvenile detention center that closed in 2011. Nobody, she said, mentioned a publicly subsidized grocery store that would sell discounted food steps from her front door.
Her frustration was blunt. She questioned why the city would spend taxpayer money this way, asking, "They have nothing better to do with my tax dollars?" And when it came to the neighborhood's actual need for subsidized food, she pushed back, noting "a lot of nice cars parked over there."
She added one more line, pointed and personal: "Certainly not for Mamdani."
At Empire x City Deli, five blocks from the planned store, a cashier offered a different tone, not anger, but something closer to defeat. He told the Daily Mail his reaction was simple.
"It is what it is. There's nothing I can do about it."
Workers at three other shops, Hero City Dark Night, Toledo Grocery, and Green Deli, also expressed skepticism about the proposal. The Daily Mail reported that the overall mood among the local retailers it surveyed ranged from worried to openly opposed.
The lone exception was Brenda Santos, a worker at Nelly's Corp Deli Grocery. Santos said she hadn't heard about the planned store but thought discounted groceries for locals sounded like "a good idea." She also described a reality the city's plan doesn't account for: she already gives food away.
"I already hand out food for free a lot. They come in and they ask for food. I give it to them instead of throwing it away."
That detail says something. The neighborhood's existing small businesses are already feeding people who can't pay. The question is whether a government-run store will help those same people, or simply undercut the shops that have been doing the work all along.
A spokesperson for the mayor's press office told the Daily Mail that the administration is aware of the concerns and is working to address them.
"The administration is engaging local bodega owners around the Peninsula and all selected NYC Groceries sites to ensure this effort strengthens the neighborhoods it serves."
The spokesperson also argued that the city-run stores fill a gap bodegas do not. "NYC Groceries is designed to fill a different need than bodegas, with a focus on providing fresh, affordable staple foods that too many New Yorkers don't have access to today," the spokesperson said.
That framing raises an obvious follow-up: what specific evidence does the administration have that bodegas and delis in the area are failing to provide affordable food? The mayor's office did not offer any. And the co-owner of A1 Depot Butcher, who has served the neighborhood for twenty years, was never told the store was coming until it was already planned.
No one disputes that Hunts Point is poor. Furman Center data cited by the Daily Mail put the neighborhood's 2023 poverty rate at 36 percent, double the citywide average of 18 percent. The Peninsula project, which began construction in 2019, is meant to revitalize the site of a juvenile detention center that shut down more than a decade ago. Affordable housing on that campus is a defensible use of public investment.
A government-owned grocery store is a different proposition entirely. It means the city will set prices, hire staff, manage inventory, absorb losses, and compete with private businesses, all on the taxpayer's dime. Mamdani pledged during his campaign to open these stores across all five boroughs. That's not a pilot program. It's a permanent expansion of city government into the retail food market.
Opposition has come from more than just the small-business owners on the block. City Council Speaker Julie Menin and nonprofits such as the Multicultural Business Coalition have also pushed back against the plan. Their concerns mirror what the bodega owners are saying: that government-subsidized competition will squeeze out the very entrepreneurs who have served these communities for years.
One detail in the Daily Mail's reporting deserves extra weight. The A1 Depot Butcher co-owner refused to go on the record under her name. She said she fears retaliation because local politicians support the project.
That is not the mark of a healthy civic process. When a twenty-year business owner across the street from a major public project is afraid to speak publicly, something has gone wrong, not with the neighborhood, but with the political culture around the project.
The mayor's office says it is "engaging" local owners. But engagement that leaves the people most affected afraid to use their own names is not engagement. It's a press release.
Key details about the NYC Groceries model remain unclear. What products will the store carry? At what discount? Who absorbs the operating losses when a government store sells below market price? What happens to the bodegas and delis that lose enough margin to close?
Local resident Pablo Torres, who was grilling and selling meat on a nearby corner, initially called the grocery store "good for the community." But when told about the business owners' concerns, he conceded the store could threaten local shops. That shift, from optimism to doubt in a single conversation, captures the gap between the plan's promise and its likely consequences.
Hunts Point doesn't need a lesson in food access from City Hall. It needs policies that support the people already doing the work. The bodegas and delis within walking distance of the Peninsula site have kept their doors open through decades of poverty, crime, and neglect. They didn't wait for a campaign promise to start feeding their neighbors.
Government has a long history of entering markets it doesn't understand and leaving wreckage behind. The small-business owners of the South Bronx already know how that story ends, they just can't say so out loud.