Grocery stores

Wednesday

Neal Pollack

Zohran Mamdani’s grocery chain will be a crime against New Yorkers

Of all the policies proposed by Zohran Mamdani, the socialist winner of last week’s New York’s Next Top Mayor competition, the idea of city-run grocery stores has proved the most divisive. If you want to reduce prices at halal carts by taking away regulations on street vendors, you’re going to get 80-plus percent approval rating. But state-owned groceries are another story. Modern history is strewn with tales of state-owned grocery disasters.

Zohran Mamdani

Tuesday

Neal Pollack

Real men go grocery shopping

A Jesse Watters Fox News segment flashed across my timeline recently, and I took it very personally. In the segment, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff were at the grocery store. “What kind of husband goes grocery shopping with his wife?” Watters asked, smugly. The answer: every kind of husband. I go grocery shopping with my wife sometimes. I also go grocery shopping without my wife. Also, my wife goes grocery shopping without me. We need to buy food. Most of the time, we buy food at the grocery store. If one or both of us is out on errands, or even doing something fun, and we need groceries, we’ll stop on the way home. Some cursed days, I find myself going to two or three grocery stores. My wife has a way of springing the multi-store trap on me.

Monday

Cockburn

What shoplifters and DC grocers tell us about the state of elite America

Grocery store Harris Teeter’s DC locations started implementing a receipt check at the door. Giant Foods recently banned duffel bags or those measuring more than 14 x 14 x 6 inches, which disqualifies most backpacks, in their stores. And Safeway instituted a glass barrier at self-checkout, requiring customers to scan their receipt before they can leave. Shoplifting has become a major issue across the country. Retailers lost almost $100 billion to theft in 2021. These numbers are more than just a slip-a-candy-bar-into-your-pocket kind of theft. Most grocery stores attribute their loss to organized shoplifting, or “boosting.” People will steal goods and then sell them for cheaper.

shoplifting

Wednesday

Mary Kate Skehan

Cost-cutting in the kitchen with Budget Bytes

Have you heard about the latest food trend sweeping the nation? It’s called “whimpering over your grocery bill.” In the early days of 2023, Americans are spending 70 percent more on eggs than one year ago. Chicken, dairy and bread prices outpaced inflation as well, increasing by double-digit percentages. What’s an adventurous home cook to do? The answer is Budget Bytes, a website I first turned to as a broke twenty-two-year-old with a galley kitchen in Queens. I didn’t know, before an acquaintance tweeted a link to a coconut vegetable curry, that you could make a tasty, filling meal, complete with leftovers, using almost entirely canned or frozen goods. Budget Bytes taught me to cook.

budget

Sunday

Addison Del Mastro

Two cheers for grocery store shopping during inflation

The other day I attempted to have sushi rolls for dinner. I ended my night disappointed, and excited to go shopping for overpriced groceries. Back in college, in central Jersey, I used to go to a Japanese restaurant in town, order the triple spicy roll combo, claim a student discount, and walk out with a perfect dinner for about $13. The filling was just pure fish, and enough spicy mayo to complement it. No crunchy flakes, no cucumber, no cost-cutting measures. Sure, it was a lot of rice despite feeling healthy, but I told myself the hours of studying would burn it off. So the other night, with my wife at the office and out for a work dinner, I was on my own for dinner and went searching for my old college favorite.

trader joe’s petitions