Peter Rosario held up a 9.6-ounce container of Folger's coffee for the crowd of 100 fellow non-profit executives, Newark city officials and shoppers to see, and compared its price there at the publicly subsidized grocery store to what he said commercial grocers typically charge.
"So this is $8.99 — nine dollars!," said Rosario, executive director of the Newark-based Casa De Don Pedro, a Latino-focused social services provider. "We've got it priced at $7.49."
After the applause died down, another local non-profit executive, Vesta Godwin Clark of the St. James Social Service Corporation, held up a jar of pickles that she said ShopRite sells for $3.79, but was just $3 at the new store.
The New Street store, called "Our Community Grocery Store" and run by Clark's organization, is one of five nonprofit, city subsidized groceries that have opened this month under an initiative by Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka to help keep his rapidly developing but still largely working class city affordable.
"Food access at an affordable price is a simple good that all Newarkers, and all people, deserve," said Baraka, who joined the stores' nonprofit operators for an announcement of the program at the store on Thursday. "No resident of the city should feel like their family doesn't have enough food, or that they can't afford to get more."
Officials said the nonprofits operating the five groceries were each awarded a $250,000 grant by the city based on a review of their qualifications.
The grants are essentially seed money the groups are free to use for capital or other start-up costs, inventory, salaries or other costs, said Rosario, whose group opened its store at Casa de Don Pedro's Broadway complex.
Pricing guidelines for the stores include a maximum markup of 30% above wholesale.
The Newark initiative is similar in some ways to one proposed but not yet implemented by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who also hopes to offer his constituents a lower-priced alternative to commercial outlets.
The two initiatives differ in that New York City would own the discount grocery stores and contract with private operators required to price goods be sold at 30% below retail, while Baraka said that Newark neither owns nor operates the stores in his city.
That said, Newark does monitor the operation of the stores, though its Office of Sustainability, Resilience and Community Transformation.
The New York Times reported last month that the Mamdani Administration was sued by a group of New York City grocery store owners known as the Multicultural Business Coalition, charging the city's discount food stores would unfairly undercut their businesses.
Baraka said on Thursday he had not heard from any groups in Newark or New Jersey with similar concerns.
NJ.com reached out to New Jersey Food Council, an industry association representing supermarkets and other retailers, and to the Newark Area Business Partnership, a general business association for the city, but neither group responded to requests for comment.
Baraka said the idea for the nonprofit groceries arose from Newark's response to a food emergency in November, when a federal government shutdown delayed funding of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
At that time, Baraka convened a meeting of Newark's nonprofit leaders to set up emergency food distribution hubs in each of the city's five wards to provide free food to tide over SNAP recipients whose benefit cards were not replenished on schedule.
Officials said all five of Newark's subsidized stores plan to begin accepting SNAP benefits and related WIC benefits specifically for woman, infants and children.
The location of the five groceries and their non-profit operators are:
312 New St., Central Ward, St. James Social Service Corporation)
39 Broadway Ave., North Ward, Casa de Don Pedro
296 Ferry St., East Ward, operated by Mantena Global Care
393 Hawthorne Ave., South Ward, Clinton Hill Community Corporation
503 Central Ave., West Ward, United Community Corporation
A city spokesperson, Crystal Rosa, said in a statement that the city chose the non-profits involved based on their "service footprint within their respective wards, longstanding work in food distribution — e.g., farmers markets, food pantries, and soup kitchens — and their historical support for the City's food security initiatives."
The New Street Store occupies a low brick building with two garage doors that was originally built as an auto repair shop. A brightly colored mural with a produce theme and the words "Care," "Fresh," and "Hope" now enriches the brick façade on the otherwise residential block.
Inside the store, the shelves are lined with name brand pasta sauce, mac 'n cheese, black beans, cans of tuna, chili, pancake mix and syrup, oats, corn chips, breakfast cereal and almost anything else found on supermarket shelves.
Refrigerated cases offered broccoli, bacon, chicken thighs and other perishables. And there was also toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, bleach, laundry detergent, disposable diapers and other essentials.
Like rent, the cost of food is a pressing issue in Newark, where the median household income of $52,060 a year in 2024 was about half the statewide figure, according to Census data.
In an announcement of the low-cost grocery stores, the city cited estimates from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 37.5% of Newark adults — or 88,000 people — reported that they were unable to buy enough food to meet their needs. The nationwide figure cited was 15.9% nationwide.
Baraka said anyone was free to shop at the nonprofit stores, regardless of their income, whether they lived in Newark, or anything else.
Indeed, the mayor said, the nonprofit stores are intended to compete for customers with for-profit bodegas, supermarkets and other retailers in an around the state's largest city, in the hope that those businesses will also start charging less for food.
"That's exactly what we want them to do," Baraka said. "We want to force them to lower their prices as well."
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