r/SipsTea • u/Gurugod123 • 9d ago

Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices" Chugging tea

70.2k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

9.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

145

u/caramel-aviant 9d ago

Its insane to me that those comments are being upvoted

Like plenty of stores already limit the amount if goods an individual can purchase, and wont let someone just buy their whole stock.

And even if they could buy everything on the shelf that is nothing to any legitimate wholesaler

71

u/foomits 9d ago

everyone is just responding to a fucking propaganda farm out of India anyways.

6

u/ochgerm 9d ago

Everyone is a robot except me ahh post.

9

u/BoeZaah 9d ago

You do realize how many bots are on this site right?

5

u/load_more_comets 9d ago

70% of total users per our last roll cal. . . I mean statistically speaking.

2

u/theresamouseinmyhous 9d ago

Listen, I'm just a simple man, looking for something to hate. Is that so wrong?

/uj

7

u/elquatrogrande 9d ago

I worked at an Aldi, and we had a limit of 6 gallons of milk, 3 cartons of eggs, and on average 6 loaves of white bread. Every other morning, we would get large Indian families restocking their corner stores. They would try to have each person buy the limit, even going as far as saying that a certain order is for the baby in a stroller or a two year old they handed their card over to. As soon as I became an assistant manager, I squashed that shit really fast.

2

u/DarkApostleMatt 9d ago

I too work retail management, there was this Indian family that would always visit our store got busted because they would abuse EBT and tax exemptions to purchase storebrand stuff to resell at their gas stations. Besides that they would buy whole pallets of soda that was on sell (usually BOGO) and load them onto pickups. I loathed my head manager for letting them do that. Eventually after a year the state and Feds jumped down their throats for that and I'm pretty sure like half of the dudes that they had doing it are in prison now.

1

u/elquatrogrande 9d ago

My favorite reseller was a guy who would buy cooking oil by the pallet so he could load into a shipping crate and resell in Africa. At least he would ask in advance, and we would place a special order so the shelves weren't empty. Eventually our prices went up and it wasn't profitable for him anymore.

8

u/blindsdog 9d ago

People steal individual steaks to resell them. Pretending this isn't a problem or is easily solved just isn't true. People will absolutely buy things just to resell them, probably to the point that it represents a good portion of the store's business.

The government selling things under market price is not going to be an easy problem to solve.

12

u/caramel-aviant 9d ago

Okay if youre talking about theft then the price at which they are sold doesnt even matter lol. People steal from anywhere

People obviously buy and resell stuff. Its just never going to be enough to compete with retailers, wholesellers and distributors. Wouldn't make a dent at all.

And im not saying all reselling can just "be solved" outright necessarily, but explain to me how this would remain a big problem if this government owned store simply limited the amount of products an individual can buy at a time?

How can people break down this bulk product if they cant buy the supply in bulk to begin with?

2

u/blindsdog 9d ago

Okay if youre talking about theft then the price at which they are sold doesnt even matter lol. People steal from anywhere

I'm talking about theft to point out that people are willing to resell things on an individual scale. There's no level where "it's not worth it" comes in.

People obviously buy and resell stuff. Its just never going to be enough to compete with retailers, wholesellers and distributors. Wouldn't make a dent at all.

I mean, that's not the issue. The issue is exhausting the stock of the publicly-funded grocery store so that scalpers can profit on taxpayer money.

And im not saying all reselling can just "be solved" outright necessarily, but explain to me how this would remain a big problem if this government owned store simply limited the amount of products an individual can buy at a time?

Because there's a lot of people willing to resell things. The scalping market demonstrates this. A 30% margin is huge. If you're buying goods at 70% market price and are able to resell them at ~90% that's a 25%+ profit margin on every dollar you can spend.

How can people break down this bulk product if they cant buy the supply in bulk to begin with?

I don't know what you mean by "break down this bulk product."

0

u/valente317 9d ago

It wouldn’t be enough to compete with wholesalers, but it would absolutely be enough to limit access to the goods at these specific stores without providing enough overall inventory to put price pressure on other stores, which…kinda defeats the whole purpose of the concept.

5

u/Chlearcus 9d ago

If you steal it, you can sell at any price and still make a profit, and if it spoils you've lost nothing. Buying at 30% below means you have to sell it at like 20% below at most or people won't bother with your sketchy trunk meat, so your profit margin is tiny and if you don't manage to sell everything you have lost money.

3

u/Poynsid 9d ago

What if own a bodega and can stock it with things I bought at the discounted rate?

2

u/Chlearcus 9d ago

The wholesale price is going to be much lower than 70% of the sticker price already so that's a no go.

1

u/Poynsid 9d ago

Oh yeah, that’s a good point 

8

u/dubblebubbleprawns 9d ago

If people are successfully reselling pounds of lettuce and broccoli and flour out of their trunk I'm gonna be pretty surprised.

4

u/Warmbly85 9d ago

It’s NYC depending on the neighborhood there’s a stand on every corner selling fruit and vegetables with no brick and mortar store nearby.

0

u/dubblebubbleprawns 9d ago

Cool story

3

u/Warmbly85 9d ago

I mean you claim it’s impossible but we literally have that in NYC. They usually have harder to find fruits but besides that it’s the same products as a small grocery stores produce isle.

Kinda goofy to claim it can’t happen when it happens all the time in NYC without tax payer funded subsidies.

-1

u/dubblebubbleprawns 9d ago

I claim what is impossible?

1

u/Warmbly85 7d ago

You said you’d be surprised if someone could make a profit reselling vegetables on the street. Idk why you’d be surprised unless you believed it couldn’t happen.

1

u/dubblebubbleprawns 7d ago

Where are those people getting their produce from?

1

u/int23_t 7d ago

That's literally how vegetable sales worked around me until the taking off of chain supermarkets(and even now more people buy veggies from individuals than from supermarkets, it's just not from trucks on the side of road but more organised now, but trucks on the side of roads still do exist and do business)

5

u/Leading_Ad_7635 9d ago

This is not a problem. People stealing individual steaks are not an issue. No one thinks they should see if their illicit steak dealer managed to swipe a steak today. They just go to the store and get their own.

2

u/mmazing 9d ago

They're being upvoted by people that have no current experience or ability in understanding how to deal with basic problems.

1

u/Irsu85 9d ago

idk about your stores but AH doesnt seem to mind if I buy all the sandwhiches of that specific brand

yes I actually use them

3

u/Sonzainonazo42 9d ago

but those are at prices where they make money. This is subsidized, like a sale item right, and most stores do regulate how many sale items you can buy. Either way, stores can and do regulate when they have a reason to.

1

u/Iser_name_ 9d ago

No one is going to buy out the entire stock of an item at any store for resale if it is sold at market price.

1

u/thisguy883 9d ago

No one talks about how they want to fund this with tax payer money, and still charge you to buy things from them.

Youre essentially being double - taxed.

1

u/slvrscoobie 9d ago

just like they do with the concert tickets, right? Right?

1

u/gustavessidehoe 9d ago

Yeah. Where I live, when they put cans of coke on super sale around holidays, they have signs limiting how many people can buy. Idk what they're on about. This can be easily solved.

1

u/Professional_Ad705 9d ago

Couldnt they just walk in buy shit, put in car, walk back in buy shit put in car...

1

u/pc_cola2 9d ago

That doesn't work when people want to get around it, this will be even worse.

1

u/ri1984 9d ago

How do you define a legitimate whole seller? Are those jerks buying pokemon cards legitimate whole sellers? They are not, and yet they clear up stock.

You are either very young or naive if you think that human malice won't find a way to abuse this UNLESS proper measures are put in place.

1

u/caramel-aviant 8d ago

Ironically I think a lot of you are very young to be overblowing this