NYC's first city-run grocery store to open in Bronx next year

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Monday that the city's first municipally run grocery store will open next year in Hunts Point, the South Bronx, fulfilling a key campaign promise to establish one supermarket in each borough.

The 20,000-square-foot store will be located at The Peninsula, an affordable housing development built on the site of the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Facility. The Peninsula will include 740 units of affordable housing alongside the grocery operation.

"This store, and The Peninsula as a whole, will serve as physical proof of our conviction that government can be a force for good, that government can drive change that improves people's lives," Mamdani said at a rally announcing the site on Monday.

The mayor stated that prices at the city-run stores will be cheaper than conventional grocers, and workers will be paid fairly and treated with dignity. "Going to the grocery store will no longer cause that same anxiety for so many New Yorkers," Mamdani said.

According to the mayor, 77 percent of households in surrounding South Bronx neighborhoods cannot afford basic needs. The store will offer discounted rates on essential goods including eggs and other staples.

Hunts Point resident Rigoberto Garcia said the store would provide economic relief. "It'll definitely be helpful money-wise because it is getting expensive everyday, buying food and necessary things," Garcia said.

The location contrasts sharply with the nearby Hunts Point Cooperative Market, one of the world's largest food distribution centers, which operates as a wholesale facility rather than a retail grocery option for local residents.

Mamdani announced in April that a second city-run store would open in East Harlem at La Marqueta beneath the Park Avenue tracks on East 115th Street, expected to open by the end of 2029. The mayor has stated his goal of operating five city-run stores across each borough before the end of his first term.