“Bodegas of New York, Unite!”: A Washington Post Editorial Badly Misses the Mark

It’s amazing watching non-New Yorkers try to wrap their heads around a city of more than 8 million people.

And many “throwing shade” savvy native New Yorkers can recognize what looks like a false-flag, right-wing-initiated political campaign when we see one—particularly when its ultimate objective appears to be undermining the credibility of New York City’s popular mayor.

It won’t work.

This week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is supposedly anti-bodega. Last week, it was the politically attractive but substantively inadequate bonus proposal for paraprofessionals—workers who, along with New York City public school employees represented by DC 37, need something far more meaningful: a permanent, pensionable increase in their base salaries, substantially improved benefits, and those improvements codified in long-term collective-bargaining agreements.

Meanwhile, the much larger economic story receives far less outrage: the impact of MAGANOMICS on the ability of working- and middle-class Americans to feed their families.

I spent most of my life in New York City—born there, raised there, and having spent much of my professional career there. I also lived in Washington, D.C., a city that has struggled with serious food-access disparities in some neighborhoods. Full disclosure: not in the Ward 4 neighborhood where I lived.

People who actually live in New York understand something that seems to get lost in these national discussions. NYC already has more than 700 city-funded community kitchens and food pantries spread across the five boroughs, in addition to other charitable, religious, nonprofit, site-based and mobile food-distribution efforts.

I guess the newly mobilized “bodega bros” could complain that all of those organizations are also cutting into their profits. Perhaps they should sue the food pantries for giving groceries away to struggling New Yorkers.

Of course, that would not be a particularly good political look.

But it illustrates the absurdity of the argument. The sheer size of New York City’s population means that even hundreds of organizations distributing free food to New Yorkers in need have not somehow destroyed the private grocery marketplace.

And in addition to those emergency food providers, New Yorkers have access to thousands of commercial food-purchasing outlets: nontraditional and convenience grocery retailers such as CVS, 7-Eleven, Duane Reade, Walgreens, and Rite Aid; medium- and large-scale supermarkets; small neighborhood grocery stores; specialty markets, including health-food stores; permanent and pop-up farmers markets; food co-ops; delis; specific cultural-nationalities, and religious related food stores, produce markets; and, of course, the so-called bodegas found throughout the city—sometimes two or three on the same street and certainly within a few blocks of one another in many neighborhoods.

That is why adding three, four, or five government-supported grocery stores to a city of this size is not going to fundamentally transform New York City’s overall grocery marketplace.

The scale simply does not support that argument.

Did The Washington Post send a reporter to New York City to actually walk through these neighborhoods and assess the likely impact of these scattered grocery outlets before reaching its conclusions?

And the word scattered matters.

New York City is not one single walkable neighborhood. Yes, it has extraordinary population density, a relatively compressed geography for its population size, and one of the world’s largest and most extensive public transportation systems. But outsiders can still misunderstand the everyday shopping habits of New Yorkers.

Brooklyn residents generally do not travel to the Bronx to do their routine grocery shopping. Manhattan residents generally do not travel to Queens or Brooklyn for it. Queens residents are not routinely heading to Staten Island—or across the city—to buy tonight’s dinner. Grocery shopping is overwhelmingly local, particularly in a city where, thankfully, the majority of residents do not own cars.

Therefore, any serious analysis of the potential competitive impact of a handful of new publicly supported grocery stores must examine: where each store will be located, what food-shopping options already exist within its realistic customer radius, what prices those existing stores charge, and what unmet community need that particular store is intended to address.

That is the type of investigative analysis I would expect from a major national newspaper.

And this is where the larger journalistic question arises.
Why expend so much editorial energy attacking a mayor for trying something, whether one ultimately agrees with his particular approach or not—to address the high cost of feeding a family, while minimizing the much larger national economic forces making groceries increasingly difficult for working- and middle-class families to afford?

That should be the story.

Stop engaging in a news-media practice that minimizes the impact of MAGANOMICS on working- and middle-class Americans’ ability to feed their families.

For, at least one elected official is attempting to do something tangible about grocery affordability rather than simply recycling the familiar political rhetoric: “We will not tolerate these high POTUS caused food prices!”

Fine, then what are you going to do about them?

Mayor Mamdani has offered an answer. People can debate whether his answer will work. They can challenge its economics, examine its implementation, scrutinize its costs, and demand evidence of its effectiveness.

As an avid, consistent daily news consumer, I believe that is good journalism.

But turning every policy proposal from Mayor Mamdani into another opportunity for reflexive anti-Mamdani commentary—with anti-New York sentiment seemingly serving as a secondary motivation—is something else entirely.

And if The Washington Post is genuinely concerned about government policy, grocery competition, affordability, and access to nutritious food, perhaps its editorial board should devote some of that investigative and editorial energy closer to home.

Go to Ward 8.

Talk with Washingtonians living in communities where obtaining affordable fresh fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious foods remains a challenge. Ask residents what grocery competition looks like from where they live. Ask how far they must travel. Ask what healthy food costs when they get there.

And while you are there, consider this remarkable contrast: a recent District of Columbia government assessment reported that: Ward 8 had only one full-service grocery store, while each of Wards 1 through 6 had at least nine.

Now that is a grocery-access disparity story worthy of serious editorial attention.

And then ask the most important question:

How do we get those Ward 8 families what Mayor Mamdani is trying to provide for New Yorkers struggling with grocery costs: greater access to good, higher-quality food at a reasonable price?
That would be journalism rooted not merely in political “hating” and partisan posturing, but in moral purpose and journalistic ethics.

“Bodegas of New York, Unite!”: A Washington Post Editorial Badly Misses the Mark: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/27/minority-owned-bodegas-will-be-hurt-by-mamdani-city-run-groceries/