Standing alongside independent grocers and joined by Assembly colleague Yudelka Tapia at Key Food in Manhattan yesterday.
Assemblymember Micah Lasher spoke to the importance of the Consumer Grocery Pricing Fairness Act, groundbreaking legislation designed to prohibit unfair price discrimination against independent grocers and increase access to affordable food for all New Yorkers.
The legislation comes at a critical moment for the state’s food retail sector. Independent grocers are shuttering across New York as large chains and big box retailers leverage their market power to secure preferential pricing from suppliers — advantages that small, locally owned stores cannot access. This crisis has been further intensified by Mondelez International’s recent decision to end direct store delivery service to independent supermarkets while maintaining that service for larger chain retailers, forcing independent stores to purchase products through third-party wholesalers at significantly higher costs.
“Let’s face it; we had a problem well before ten-dollar eggs and we still have a problem today,” said Harlem State Senator Cordell Cleare, Prime Senate Sponsor. “The monopolistic grocery price fixing by the billionaire corporate 1% is not only a threat to freedom, fairness and capitalism but to the health and well being of those who simply want to shop for the products that make their family healthy and happy. Independent grocers and their legions of customers are being taken advantage of and our bill will add equity back into a system that sorely needs it.”…