It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Now we continue our election series, 30 issues and 30 days.

Today it's issue 25 city-run grocery stores. It's one of mayoral frontrunners

around Mamdani's big campaign promises to establish a network of city-owned, low-cost grocery stores,

one in each borough, to combat rising prices and, in particular, food deserts. These grocery stores

would exist as a public resource under a Mamdani administration,

not as a profit-seeking business.

Critics say the plan is fiscally irresponsible.

That's their side.

Joining us now is Yasmin Tayag, staff writer at the Atlantic,

to talk about what Mamdani's grocery store proposal could look like in practice,

how other cities have tried similar experiments. She's looked at that in depth, and what the

skepticism around us, around it, tells us about food access and affordability in New York.

Hi, Aspen. Welcome back to WNYC.

Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me.

Can you first explain the proposal in more detail because I think people hear this as kind of a

bumper sticker and then most of the coverage goes on to other things. City-run grocery stores.

How would they work?

Well, you know, it's funny to describe it as a bumper sticker because that's kind of all the detail we have from Momdani.

So his proposal is to build a network of city-owned affordable grocery stores,

and he wants to start with a pilot of five grocery stores, one in each of the boroughs.

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