Exclusive | Mamdani officials scramble to ease concerns about public supermarkets but local business leaders arent buying it

The Mamdani administration is scrambling to ease concerns about its plans to open government-owned supermarkets — but recent talks have instead raised even greater alarms among local business owners, The Post has learned.New York City bodega owners came to City Hall last week for a “roundtable discussion” at the invitation of Julie Su, deputy mayor for economic justice — only to get barraged with “intrusive” questions about their businesses, a source close to the situation said.Ahead of the meeting last Monday — attended by reps from city agencies and trade groups for the city’s 13,000 bodegas — Su asked the group in a questionnaire, “What items are sold the most at your stores?” and “Where is your profit margin the greatest?” sources said.The bodega reps declined to answer, according to sources.“They wanted us to share proprietary information with them but they don’t answer our questions and that’s why there is distrust,” said a bodega rep who did not want to be identified.Business owners gripe that city officials are only now seeking their input — and seemingly as an afterthought — after sparking alarms in April with a surprise plan to build a public grocery store in East Harlem at La Marqueta.That store will cost a whopping $30 million to build – and threatens the livelihood of more than a dozen existing stores nearby.The city insists its socialist-inspired vision for at least one public supermarket in each of the city’s five boroughs – the first of which will open in Hunts Point in the Bronx next year – will not directly compete with existing stores nearby.

“We met with bodega owners so they could help us plan and ensure that we take into account their challenges and their role as a part of the food ecosystem,” Su said in a statement to The Post.“One of the questions we wanted to understand is whether there are key products bodegas sell and rely on that we should not sell.That’s how serious we are about ...