New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan for government-run grocery stores is now facing a legal challenge from some of the immigrant business owners who say they could end up paying the price for it.
The Multicultural Business Coalition, which represents numerous immigrant-owned businesses across the city, filed two lawsuits Monday challenging the Mamdani administration’s grocery initiative. The filings came as the administration announced that the first government-owned grocery store is expected to open early next year.
MBC President Ken Roldan sharply criticized the proposal, arguing that businesses operated by communities that have faced discrimination could now find themselves competing directly against City Hall.
Roldan called the proposal “a direct assault on minority business by a mayor who claims to be a champion of disenfranchised poor and working-class New Yorkers,” according to the New York Post.
One of the lawsuits draws a provocative comparison to an old New York political battle: Walmart.
Efforts to bring Walmart stores into New York City faced fierce opposition for years, with critics arguing that the retail giant’s size and resources could put smaller neighborhood businesses in jeopardy. The MBC argues that government-backed grocery stores raise their own version of that concern.
According to the coalition, City Hall “failed to study the discriminatory effects” that government-sponsored grocery stores could have on existing local businesses. The lawsuit is asking a court to require the city to conduct a feasibility study examining the potential consequences before moving ahead.
“There is no extant evidence that the respondents have undertaken any studies and or serious analysis before its current arbitrary site selection,” the lawsuit states.
For some of the business owners involved, the dispute is also personal.
MBC Chairman Frank Garcia pointed to his own family’s history in East Harlem, where neighborhood bodegas operated during a period when major grocery chains were pulling out.
“My grandfather opened up one of the first bodegas in the late 1960s when East Harlem was burning, and the A&Ps and Waldbaums were leaving,” Garcia told the Post. “He established the first Latino Grocery Association to protect the rights of immigrant store owners. I am proud to be following up in his tradition because what Mayor Mamdani is doing is disgracing his memory.”
That history is central to the coalition’s case against the plan. Its members argue that immigrant entrepreneurs built grocery businesses in neighborhoods where larger retailers were not always willing to operate, only to now face potential competition from stores supported by the city government.
Jairo Guzman, president of the New York State Mexican Chamber of Commerce, called on Mamdani to abandon the proposal and instead work directly with existing businesses.
“Mayor Mamdani needs to withdraw his disastrous plan and work with us to find different ways to bolster and sustain what so many (New York City) immigrants have created,” Guzman said.
He also described the succession of immigrant communities that have operated New York’s neighborhood grocery stores over the decades.
“The Puerto Ricans were the bodega pioneers and they were followed by the Dominicans, the Arabs, the Koreans, the Chinese, and finally, my Mexican business members,” Guzman said.
