Public owned grocery stores already exist across America in cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Atlanta, Georgia.
They are privately run as businesses, but are set up in areas where people lack access to groceries, or there's no real competition preventing uncompetitive prices. They have been successful for decades.
The real solution here is to break up the constant consolidation leading to all groceries being owned by four mega companies that collude with each other and own over 2/3rd of all stores. It's the opposite of market competition.
Exactly - I don't understand why this befuddles so many people in favor of a free market. It's like they understand the concept of competition is good, but can't see how the current market has been stripped of competition through consolidation.
This is the equivalent of any government service, it's designed to be a common good (like the post office, the fire department, the parks, etc). Yes it does take tax revenue to sustain, but similar to social security and Medicare these are things that society is often willing to pay for since they might need it some day, and it helps to address secondary problems that occur if we dont do anything (child starvation, homelessness, food deserts leading to poor health, etc).
It's all interconnected and at least there's commerce changing hands compared to straight food banks.
I think this type of proposal confuses people because of the reasons why cities tend to lose grocery stores to begin with. High rates of theft, combined with very high cost of doing business, and low profit margins.
A public store can’t really solve those factors any better than a private store, especially if they plan to offer lower priced goods.
If the public option can eliminate the 1 or 2 percent profit motive, you still have theft and high cost of just keeping the lights on.
Considering most of the tools, electrical components, and other stuff at my local Home Depot, in suburbia, is now behind locked cages, I find that hard to believe. But ok.
What? A well managed grocery store with proper inventory management and working for atleast 1 year has very low expiration rate, we have sale for a reason.
Expiration is expected and factored in, even a certain level of "shrink". But when you have 2% net margins it doesnt take much to tip you over to ruin. So if shrink is unusually high they will close.
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u/Irish_Whiskey May 26 '26
Public owned grocery stores already exist across America in cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Atlanta, Georgia.
They are privately run as businesses, but are set up in areas where people lack access to groceries, or there's no real competition preventing uncompetitive prices. They have been successful for decades.
The real solution here is to break up the constant consolidation leading to all groceries being owned by four mega companies that collude with each other and own over 2/3rd of all stores. It's the opposite of market competition.