‘THE AMERICAN
Bodega owners fear grocery delivery apps will
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN AND
GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
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 lowcost,
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.
Muhammad Esa owner of Farm Shop Deli in Park Slope (above), a Buyk courier delivers groceries in the Village (top right), and Farm Shop Deli in Park
Slope (bottom right). Photos by Gabriele Holtermann
‘The American Way is
done’
“Any bodegas that were in
the busy commercial neighborhoods,
COURIER L 28 IFE, NOVEMBER 5-11, 2021
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 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
This is the third
story in amNew-
York Metro’s
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.
THE
RACE RACE TO TO
DELIVER