January 1, Former Grocer SHREDS Socialist Mayor’s Grocery Scheme: ‘Won’t Last a Year’

Wyatt’s Take

• NYC’s socialist mayor is using $70 million in taxpayer money to open government-run grocery stores that will bankrupt immigrant-owned small businesses across the city
• A congressman who grew up in the grocery business says these stores will bleed money from day one and probably won’t survive even a year
• The plan prices essentials 30% below market — meaning you and I subsidize every banana while crushing the American Dream for hardworking shop owners

A former grocer is slamming New York City’s socialist mayor’s plan for government-run grocery stores, warning it’ll destroy hundreds of small businesses owned by the very immigrants Democrats claim to champion. Rep. Mike Rulli, R-Ohio, who grew up working in his family’s grocery chain, didn’t mince words about the doomed scheme.

“That supermarket will just bleed red the entire time it’s open, from the first time you turn the key until it closes,” Rulli told Fox News Digital. “And I would bet the farm there’s no way these grocery stores last more than five years — they might not even last a year.”

Rulli grew up with his family’s Ohio-based grocery store chain, Rulli Brothers, which is now run by his brothers. That real-world experience gives him insight the ivory-tower socialists running New York simply don’t have.

The congressman said his family’s small but thriving two-location business has shown him firsthand the razor-thin margins grocers work with — and how devastating unfair government competition would be.

“You will put hundreds of these small businesses out of business. And a lot of these businesses are owned by immigrants,” Rulli said. “So I mean, I don’t think the mayor could possibly have asked for a worse situation.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an open Democratic socialist, unveiled the plan while campaigning. The city has committed a staggering $70 million to build one store in each of New York’s five boroughs, aiming to open all five by 2030. That’s your money, folks — flushed down the drain on a fantasy.

“Once a month, our five city-run grocery stores will set prices for this core set of goods at 30% below typical retail prices,” Mamdani said during a recent news conference.

While progressive activists are celebrating, business groups representing actual working Americans are furious. The Multicultural Business Coalition is threatening to sue the city over the scheme that will kneecap immigrant entrepreneurs.

Rulli explained why these government stores are destined to fail — and cost taxpayers a fortune in the process. Grocery stores already operate on margins so thin you could see through them.

“When you think about the grocery industry, [it] runs on about 27% gross. That’s before you pay your bills. Once you pay your bills, you’re about one-and-a-quarter, one-and-half-percent net,” he said.

Translation: private grocers earn pennies on every dollar after expenses. Government-run stores selling below cost will hemorrhage cash from opening day until they inevitably close.

The congressman didn’t hold back his final assessment of this socialist experiment with your tax dollars.

“This is the biggest mistake the mayor has made,” Rulli said.

Wyatt Matters

This is what happens when ivory-tower socialists who’ve never run a lemonade stand start playing SimCity with real people’s livelihoods. Government has no business running grocery stores — it can’t even fix potholes efficiently. Meanwhile, immigrant families who came here believing in the American Dream of building something with their own two hands are about to watch city hall crush them with subsidized competition. Your tax dollars funding their destruction. That’s not compassion — that’s cruelty dressed up in progressive buzzwords.