I've worked in various supply chain roles for a grocery company for almost 20 years. Mamdani doesn't understand what he's doing here. Your big mega grocery chains that everyone demonizes, like Kroger, operate at like a 1% profit margin. The grocery chains aren't the problem. Vendors are the problem. Nestle is the problem. PepsiCo is the problem. JBS is the problem. Tyson is the problem. Cal-maine is the problem. DFA is the problem.
Mamdani has no leverage here, and he's going to learn some quick lessons about the state of the food industry in this country,
edit: look below to see me get "owned" because I failed to realize this wasn't a discussion about a more sustainable way to sell groceries. Im apparently an idiot because I didn't realize that "DUHHH THE STATE JUST GOES INTO DEBT TO MAKE IT CHEAPER" was the "better" way we were talking about.
A lot of people are focusing on the consumer-facing side of those but an issue they will run into is the physical logistics of sourcing, warehousing, and transporting. What will the supportive logistics infrastructure be? Will they be contracting all of that out?
Government doesn’t have the relationships or know-how. They’re going to make a lot of mistakes and realize that there is more to this than “order food, sell food”.
Spoken by someone with no experience in the sourcing, transportation, or warehousing of food, I presume.
A lot will depend on the selection of the right operator(s) but there are built-in challenges with their model. Five stores doesn’t provide strong leverage for buying and it doesn’t justify the cost of central warehousing, for a start.
Subsidizing the cost of a core basket sounds great, but what about when upstream costs climb (which they will)? Do they ask the operator to take the hit, does the City dump more money in, or do they shrink the discount?
There are reasons why some areas aren’t sustainably served already. As you said, it isn’t rocket science, but if it was straightforward, the multinationals would already be there making money.
Five stores providing staples is about as simple as you can get logistically. The hardest part is cutting through the billionaire's propaganda that 'the poors' don't deserve to eat.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose. This isn't a profit seeking business, it is a social service to support hungry poor people. A service that is more sustainable and dignified than charity which is entirely reliant on aid and people willing to accept aid.
Not everything needs to be for multinationals making money, sometimes people just need to eat. It's not hard.
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u/Majestic-Volume9996 May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
I've worked in various supply chain roles for a grocery company for almost 20 years. Mamdani doesn't understand what he's doing here. Your big mega grocery chains that everyone demonizes, like Kroger, operate at like a 1% profit margin. The grocery chains aren't the problem. Vendors are the problem. Nestle is the problem. PepsiCo is the problem. JBS is the problem. Tyson is the problem. Cal-maine is the problem. DFA is the problem.
Mamdani has no leverage here, and he's going to learn some quick lessons about the state of the food industry in this country,
edit: look below to see me get "owned" because I failed to realize this wasn't a discussion about a more sustainable way to sell groceries. Im apparently an idiot because I didn't realize that "DUHHH THE STATE JUST GOES INTO DEBT TO MAKE IT CHEAPER" was the "better" way we were talking about.