The Race to Deliver
Muhammad Esa owner of Farm Shop Deli in Park Slope.
Bodega and store owners fear grocery delivery apps
will eat into their profi ts and community service
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN AND
GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
This is the third story in a fi ve-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 fl ooded 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 traffi c.
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 fi rst 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.
“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
GABRIELE HOLTERMANNN
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 infl uence 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
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