Missouri Government Owned Grocery Store Closes

There is a national discussion occurring around New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s big idea to create a network of city funded grocery stores. Can it work? Has it worked before?

NYC Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani

If your perspective is that government is only for the good of the people, you will view what it does as altruistic, while complaining that services aren’t what they “should” be, and that more money for said programs/services is always the answer.  Should you view government as a necessary evil, any growth of its programs and agencies only results in the forced confiscation and thus further shrinking of private citizens property and agency.

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Mamdani’s city funded grocery store idea isn’t new, and it just failed in Missouri. Kansas City’s Sun Fresh Market in the Linwood Shopping Center has been plagued for a while by bare shelves, crime and a persistent stonk that drives off casual shoppers. The crime has been a particular problem for some time, with the store spending extra money for security, to no avail.

Sun Fresh is closed at Linwood Center Kansas City

Sun Fresh Market was part of a pointed Community Improvement District where the city owned a shopping center, and a non-profit ran the businesses. But after $18 million dollars in taxpayer money was used to keep the grocery store open.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said there’s “a limit to what we will invest as well.”

Remaining regular shoppers from the neighborhood will have to find another place to get groceries. There are four other grocery stores between one mile and a mile and a half away. Dollar stores also seem to be similar distances away.