The Grocery Grift: Why Toronto and New York Are About to Light Taxpayer Money on Fire

Here is a sentence I did not expect to write in 2026.

Your government wants to open a grocery store.

Last month, Toronto City Council voted 21-to-3 to open four municipally-run grocery stores. In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is opening five — one per borough — on a budget that has already ballooned from $60 million to $70 million before a single egg has hit a shelf. The first store, in East Harlem? Thirty million dollars. On land the city already owns.

Let me save you some time. The math does not work.

Three Percent Isn’t a Conspiracy

Loblaws — the company every Canadian passionately hates — runs on a net profit margin of three to four percent. Costco and Walmart? Two to three. These aren’t robber barons stashing gold in a vault. These are continental operations on margins so thin, one bad quarter eats a year of profit.

Even Toronto’s own Daily Bread Food Bank, which supports the pilot, admitted in its council submission that wiping out retail margins entirely would save the average family somewhere between forty and seventy-three bucks a month.

Assuming the city can match a company that has spent a century perfecting every inch of its supply chain.

It can’t.

Loblaws has 2,400 stores. Walmart has thousands. They own the warehouses, the trucks, the private-label lines, the data. When they sit down with a supplier, the supplier brings a towel to cry into. Toronto is opening four stores. Mamdani is opening five. No scale. No leverage. No private label. No logistics. And — per Mamdani’s verbal tic at the East Harlem launch — “union standards” on every shift.

No scale. No leverage. No expertise. Higher wages. No profit motive. And somehow… lower prices at the checkout?

Sure. And I’m a major-league starting pitcher at 42.

The Kansas City Prequel

If you want to know how this movie ends, it already exists. It’s called Sun Fresh. Opened in Kansas City in 2018 with noble intentions. Between bonds, loans, and subsidies, somewhere between $17 and $29 million in taxpayer money went in. Last year it needed an emergency $750,000 top-up to keep the lights on. In August, the doors locked for good.

The Aldi a mile away? Humming along. No subsidy. Fresh vegetables. Functioning like a grocery store that actual humans have seen before.

Chicago looked at this same model in 2023, did the homework, and quietly walked away. Toronto and New York apparently didn’t read the file.

Meanwhile, Above 30,000 Feet

Which brings us to Doug Ford. The day before he called Toronto’s pilot “the craziest idea” he had ever heard, his government quietly bought him a $28.9 million used Bombardier Challenger. Twelve seats. Widest-in-class cabin. On your dime.

Put the numbers next to each other. Mamdani’s East Harlem store: $30 million. Ford’s jet: $29 million. One gets people eggs. The other gets Doug to a press conference without waiting in line at Tim Hortons.

The Toronto Star broke it. The opposition nicknamed it the Gravy Plane. Forty-eight hours later, Ford was selling it. He didn’t see the light. He felt the heat.

And yet — he’s still right about the grocery stores. Two bad ideas can share the same news cycle.

The Bottom Line

Groceries aren’t expensive because Galen Weston is greedy. They’re expensive because for a decade, central banks printed money like confetti at a wedding and governments spent even faster. That is inflation. That is why your bill doubled.

And now the same people who lit the fire are rolling up in a fire truck, offering to sell you cheaper eggs.

You can’t spend your way out of a problem you spent your way into.

No matter how cheaply you price the bacon.

Information for this story was found via the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to the organizations discussed. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.