Bodega and store owners fear grocery delivery app
By Kirstyn Brendlen and Gabriele
Holtermann
This is the third story in amNewYork
Metro’s five-part series examining the
proliferation of grocery delivery services
across the city — and the impact they’re
having on residents and brick-and-mortar
business owners alike.
Quick-commerce grocery delivery
services like JOKR, Gorillas, and Fridge
No More have flooded New York City’s
market this year, promising quick delivery
and relatively low prices for everything
from a full week of groceries to a
forgotten dinner ingredient or evening
ice cream purchase.
Where traditional grocery stores shell
out for big pieces of the city’s pricey real
estate to stock thousands of items and
keep the store orderly and well-staffed,
the apps operate out of “dark stores,”
small warehouses carrying about 2,000
items.
The companies say spending less
money on rent and dealing with food
waste allows them to keep their prices
low, about on-par with local grocery
stores for most items, and delivery is
free or low-cost, unlike more established
apps like InstaCart or Fresh Direct.
Grocery stores aren’t the only businesses
with something to worry about.
For many of the city’s nine million residents,
the local corner store is the go-to
for a quick purchase. Stocked with the
essentials, more than 10,000 bodegas
serve their customers faithfully at all
hours. In some parts of the city, bodegas
are more than a quick stop — they’re
the only food store nearby.
While it’s all still new, some grocery
store and bodega owners, still recovering
from months of lockdowns, are concerned
about the disruption.
‘The American Way is done’
“Any bodegas that were in the busy
commercial neighborhoods, they didn’t
do too well,” said Youseff Mubarez,
director of public relations at the Brooklyn
based Yemeni American Merchants
Association. “Rents were high, not a
lot of foot traffic. But the stores in food
deserts, obviously they did their best to
stay open and get as much product as
they can, but they stayed in business
because they were selling what most
people in the neighborhood need every
day.”
Muhammad Esa, who has been in the
retail business for decades, learned the
trade from his father and uncles. He has
owned Farm Shop Deli on 5th Avenue
and 4th Street in Park Slope for twenty
years, and said the apps aren’t the first
threat to business.
Long before the grocery delivery apps,
the business changed when wholesale
operators like Costco and BJ’s became
open to the public.
Caribbean Life, N 24 OVEMBER 12-18, 2021
THE RACE T
Muhammad Esa, owner of Farm Shop Deli in Park Slope. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
“So we are just surviving on necessities
that people just need and come
and grab,” Esa said. “We’re not really,
like, maybe 30 years ago, when we used
to be just like a supermarket, we buy
wholesale, we buy just like a supermarket.
Then things started to change when
the wholesale became available to the
public.”
Small businesses don’t stand a
chance against corporations like Costco
or Whole Foods, he feels, because corporations
have too much influence over
politicians, which has chipped away on
regulations that protected small business
owners in the past.
“The American Way is done,” Esa
said. “It’s just a thing of the past.”
Jose Bello, a Washington Heights
native and founder of My Bodega Online,
was encouraged by the city’s decision
to cap marketing and delivery fees apps
like Uber Eats and DoorDash can charge
restaurants — but feels it’s unlikely regulations
are in the works for new apps.
“This half a billion dollar industry
was created in the last 18 months,” he
said. “By the time that people realize
the effect that they may or may not have
—maybe either they burst as a bubble,
or they take over everything — it’s too
late, they are here.”
Mubarez said more hardship is
coming for bodega owners and their
employees as emergency grants run dry
and the unemployment payments that
were allowing customers to spend their
money stop.
“Right now, all the businesses are
like, ‘I’m making 25, 30 percent less
than I was making last month, it’s getting
tougher to stay open, and stuff like
that,” Mubarez said. “It’s just the worst
timing for lower-income communities,
they’re getting less money, and then,
you know, the more affluent people like
landlords are saying, ‘Oh, it’s time to
raise rent again, everything is back to
normal.’ It’s just widening the gap.”
The potential to adapt
Bello launched My Bodega Online, a
delivery platform for bodegas, last year.
Many were already delivering informally,
he said, when customers would call
up wanting something and they’d send
out an employee who wasn’t busy on a
bike or e-bike.
The app makes ordering and delivering
easier and more efficient for bodegas
and their customers, and makes the
process a little more official for customers
who might not be used to calling up
to place an order.
Adapting to the new reality and keeping
up with technology is critical if
bodegas want to stay competitive, Bello
said.
“They are so big,” he said of the new
delivery services. “Bodegas are not seeing
what is coming. Because they’re
going to, if not destroy, they’re going
to modify the bodegas. Bodegas, if they
don’t disappear, they will be kind of the
A Buyk courier delivers groceries in
the Village. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
daily sandwich kind of thing, you go
to buy lottos, that kind of thing, but
the grocery part will not be as strong
there.”
Ten years ago, Bello said, taxi services
— not just yellow cabs, but private companies
who riders would call when they
needed a ride — were an integral part of
the fabric of New York City, a longtime
and iconic part of its streets. But the
advent of cheaper ride-hailing apps like
Uber and Lyft turned that upside down.
“They had capital, they were the
famous people in our parades, they
were on every corner of the city,” he
said. “And they disappeared. There are
a few here and there, they’ve even tried
putting out an app, but they kind of dis-