Across the country, politicians are sounding the alarm about rising food prices and lack of access to grocery stores. Their solution? Government-run supermarkets.
There’s just one problem: in many cases, the same policymakers proposing these taxpayer-funded stores are also making it harder for private grocers to open in the first place.
That contradiction isn’t just ironic, it’s expensive.
Consider what’s happening in New York City. Officials are advancing plans for publicly owned grocery stores, pitched as a way to bring down prices and improve access. But early estimates show these stores could cost more than $3,000 per square foot to build, roughly four times what it costs private companies like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.
And that’s just the construction cost. Even with subsidies like free rent, projections suggest these stores will operate at a loss.
In other words, government isn’t just stepping in – it’s stepping in with a model that is dramatically more expensive and structurally less efficient.
Now look closer to home.
In Washington state, lawmakers were considering a bill in the last session – House Bill 2313 – that would have explicitly allowed cities to own and operate grocery stores, even to the point of acquiring land through eminent domain and funding projects with public dollars.
The goal is to address so-called “food deserts.” But here’s the catch: at the very same time policymakers are exploring government-run grocery stores, private grocery projects are being slowed – or stopped altogether.
Take the proposed WinCo store in North Seattle. It has been tied up not because of clear environmental harm, but because of process – layers of review, appeals, and procedural delays. The result? No store. No jobs. No new source of affordable food.
An empty lot doesn’t lower grocery prices. A delayed store doesn’t feed families.
But these kinds of delays are increasingly common. And when stores don’t get built, the narrative quickly shifts: this is a “food desert,” proof that the private sector has failed.
What gets left out is the role policy plays in creating that outcome.
Grocery stores operate on razor-thin margins, often 1 to 2 percent. Success depends on efficiency, logistics, and scale. Even small increases in cost or uncertainty can kill a project. When governments layer on unpredictable permitting processes, legal challenges, and regulatory barriers, they raise the risk and reduce the incentive to invest.
Then, when investment dries up, policymakers point to the absence of stores as justification for government intervention.
That’s backwards.
We’re creating scarcity and then proposing to solve it with a more expensive, less efficient version of the same thing.
And in Washington, that contradiction is becoming explicit. Lawmakers are debating whether cities should run grocery stores while private ones struggle to get built at all.
To be clear, not every community will attract a grocery store overnight, even with fewer barriers. There are places where the economics are genuinely difficult. But that makes it all the more important not to sabotage the projects that are viable.
Before we spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars building government-run grocery stores, we should ask a simpler question: why aren’t private ones being built?
If the answer includes regulatory delays, excessive costs, or policy-driven risk, then the solution isn’t to replace the market, it’s to fix the rules.
Because the current approach amounts to this: block a grocery store that could be built for a fraction of the cost, then propose building one yourself at four times the price.
That’s not a solution.
It’s a self-inflicted problem.
