[cogman10]

Baldwin and Erie were both in small towns. I can't find any information on Erie, but Baldwin ultimately saw a $100->$200k yearly shortfall for a city of 1400.

If they wanted to accommodate that shortfall, then that translates to a $150 yearly tax burden per person. They instead chose to shutter the store.

The stores lost money in both cities, but in the process baldwin sold over $1M in produce breaking even at least once.

> There is zero chance that it would operate at a profit or break even.

The Baldwin example shows that breaking even is definitely possible. And for a city with the population density of NY, it's probably easier to pull off. It's certainly easier to support these stores if there's a shortfall.

> Lastly, nothing about any of this in any way comparable to NYPD as a budgetary item. Comparing retail food to public safety is just really bizarre.

But it is. The NYPD is simply overfunded. They can buy toys and tanks while paying the cops to catch people jumping turnstiles and play candy crush.

A pretty small fraction of the NYPD budget could cover shortfalls. That's why it's brought up. These grocery stores, even if they never turn a profit, won't be costing the city $100M, or $10M. They likely won't even shortfall to $1M. For a city with a budget of billions, adding 1M in is really just a drop in bucket.

And in the process, such a grocery store will help far more people than the average NYPD cop does.

[nobody9999]

>A pretty small fraction of the NYPD budget could cover shortfalls. That's why it's brought up. These grocery stores, even if they never turn a profit, won't be costing the city $100M, or $10M. They likely won't even shortfall to $1M. For a city with a budget of billions, adding 1M in is really just a drop in bucket.

This. A city with not just a budget of "billions" but of USD$116 billion[0].

Even if each of the five pilot stores required USD$1 million in subsidies, that's 0.0000431% of the city budget or USD$0.61 per NY resident. We're definitely going bankrupt over that right?

And if it results in the poorest NYers getting access to cheaper, healthier food, that's good for business (healthier people work more), education (healthier people learn better), healthcare (healthier people consume less healthcare), quality of life (reasonably priced healthy food allows folks to live better lives) and a host of other benefits.

As a NYC resident, I'm happy to give the poorest folks in the city $0.61 a year or even $2.00 a year. Isn't $0.61 a reasonable price to pay for making the lives of thousands of your neighbors demonstrably better?

[0] https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/06/30/nyc-council-passes-11...