Posted on 08/07/2026 8:30:34 AM PDT by MtnClimber
You've Gotten a Glimpse Into the Future of Mamdani's Commie Groceries.
“Teenage grocery store shelf stockers have taken to carrying tasers in their pockets in case they have to defend themselves from customers at the Sun Fresh Linwood at 31st Street and Prospect Avenue in East Kansas City.”
So reporte the Kansas City Star in September 2024. What makes the article interesting is that Star editors had championed the idea of a city-run grocery store. To their credit, they ate their crow in public, crow being about the only thing left to eat.
Much has been made about the possibility—since denied—that shoppers would have to prove their city residency to shop in New York City Mayor Mamdani’s five commie grocery stores. That angle was fun for a while, but it skirted the larger issue. Even before the racial spoils system set in, no urban government ran anything well anywhere, let alone an enterprise as complex and as corruptible as a super market.
The Kansas City experience is instructive. As in New York’s city proposed stores, the city set the rules and paid for the infrastructure, but a private company ran the day-to-day operation. This whole enchilada grew out of Michelle Obama’s failure to understand why inner-cities often become “food deserts.”
Kansas City leaders understood the problem no better. In 2014, the City bought the failing Linwood Shopping Center, a strip mall that included the store site. The site had sat vacant for the previous seven years, which should have told city leaders something but did not.
After four years of planning and payoffs, The Sun Fresh Market, managed by Lipari Bros, opened in June 2018. In November 2019, the Star ran a story on the new market headlined, “We’re Booming.” By this time, the City had spent $17 million on the project.
The “boom” was an illusion. The “fatigue” had already set in. In 2022, Community Builders of Kansas City (CBKC), a Black-owned development agency, took over the city lease from the weary Lipari Bros. “It’s a big deal,” CBKC CEO Emmet Pierson told the Star. “First of all, it’s a grocery store in an urban community. It’s in a food desert. But it’s a bigger deal because it’s owned by a minority led organization.”
An early sign that the experiment wasn’t exactly working
“It was an unusual move for the city to play such a hands-on role in development,” the Star reported. City leaders blundered in nonetheless, hoping “to ensure long-neglected residents of the East Side had access to fresh food.” CBKC quickly found why grocery chains avoided the East Side. It turns out that neighborhood brigands did not care whether white entrepreneurs ran the store or black NGOs.
“People use drugs and then they go straight to the grocery store and steal,” said Pierson. They also threatened staff. Two managers quit citing “hazardous working conditions.” The stock boys carried tasers for self protection. Due to theft and the price of security, the store hemorrhaged money. The store’s front door stayed broken for months, maybe years, because managers couldn’t afford to fix it, nor could they resolve the “rancid odor” that enveloped the store.
To add to the fun, the “unhoused” camped out in the front of the store. Prostitutes solicited Johns. Drug dealers sold their wares. Shoplifters evaded security by hopping on a bus that the City, still swimming in Covid cash, had made “free.” And to keep the brigand business booming, a woke DA released the perps even before they could eat their stolen Skittles.
“It’s an unfortunate misconception to believe that the Black community does not want the protection of policing,” State Senator Barbara Anne Washington told the Star. “We want to get that protection, and we want to get that service, and, by the way, we’re paying lots of money for that to happen.”
Mamdani can defund the police, but to put a grocery store in a “food desert” he may have to hire the foodie equivalent of the French Foreign Legion.
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What could go wrong?
Democrats know why retail can no longer exist in the inner cities, and now those problems are moving out to the suburbs.
Coming soon to NYC.
Uhh,....” defend themselves from customers “. There, RIGHT THERE is the sign of insanity.
Thieves are not customers.
If anyone in your place of work attacks you, this is not a “the customer is always right” situation. This is felony assault and a taser is being generous of you. Plus, a can of beans upside the head will do even more damage.
Attacks/thefts in any store are the fault of store management. OK, the commie trash city you live in won’t do shitte, either with coppers or the court. But, you can have enough security personnel on hand to escort the trash out the door — as many times as it takes. If you are unwilling to protect your staff and your real customers in this manner you need to go out of business ‘cause you are not serious.
The supermarket is a modern marvel of intricate systems that all have to work together to make sure that sweet cold fresh jug of 2% is waiting for you ready to drink and it will be good for 14 days minimum.
It is complicated.
You never see 98% of the people who are working to make sure all of this happens. Unless you are in the business you do not even know that these people exist.
If they got people who knew the business from the ground up(such people are rare and expensive) this might be able to lurch along for a bit. After all commissaries are government run grocery stores and they work. Mostly. Even are self funding.
But they won't. Because they have a vision of how they think things should work not how they actually do.
America has the fattest welfare recipients in the history of the world.
I was carrying a fixed blade and a glock 42 when I worked 3rd shift at Wally world. “Good” part of town. We had some wank come in and bust the glass on the cigarette cases and walk out with cartons. There were some customers who were edge of scary sketchy (probably schizo definitely metally ill) I figured better be prepared.
The problem with loser children of wealthy 'elites' like Mamdani - - is they want to be 'hero's' of the oppressed when they have no clue 'why' for-profit stores won't touch these sites. And of course 'the oppressed' are thrilled to find soft touch idiots to roll...It's a set up for commie takeovers. Oh and the reason people don't have $400 for an emergency is because (with rare exception) they spend more money than they make and fall for instant gratification... And it happens at all income levels.
What’s the demographics of east Kansas City?
A lot like North Topeka.
In the early 1970’s I worked the night stocking crew at the Del Paso Heights (Sacramento) Safeway store that was located in a high criminal area of town. Many of the daytime crew carried concealed guns after a crew member was beaten one day. Not long before that I stupidly followed a robber out of the Alhambra Safeway to get a look of the license plate of his car but he saw me and raised a sawed off shotgun at me before I took cover behind a parked car. Years later I was robbed at my restaurant in Sacramento by a pair who I was able to later ID from mug shots. They had killed a 7-11 employee the week before. If you work for any length of time in retail in Democratic controlled urban areas you’re going to run into these situations. Get a gun, practice with it and be prepared. It can happen to you.
U.S.S.R. style Supermarket’s always fail due to socialism and that never changes.
Some of the staff at the local Muslim Walmart in town are now wearing body cameras.
It’s the location where the McDonald’s closed and the in-store restaurant is now Halal. Most of the women working in that Walmart seem to wear headscarfs
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