New York’s Bodegas Aren’t Just Fighting for Wine and Liquor Shelves. They’re Fighting to Survive a Mayor Who Wants to Compete With Them, Too.
New York’s grocery chains have spent nearly two decades losing the same fight, and this year they changed the terms of engagement. Wegmans, Walmart, Target, Amazon’s Whole Foods, and Instacart are asking Albany to let supermarkets and big-box stores sell wine and spirits — currently the exclusive domain of the state’s roughly 4,000 licensed independent liquor stores — and this time they’ve brought bodega and convenience-store groups into the coalition with them. That’s the twist worth sitting with: businesses that would normally be natural rivals for shelf space are now making the same ask, because New York’s alcohol laws haven’t meaningfully changed since Prohibition ended, and everyone locked out of the current system has more to gain from breaking it open than from fighting each other over it.
For bodegas, the timing isn’t incidental. New York City is separately moving forward with Mayor Mamdani’s plan for five city-owned grocery stores, selling staples at roughly 30% below typical retail prices, operating rent-free in city-owned buildings, with the first location slated to open by the end of 2027. Bodega groups have been openly uneasy about that plan since it was announced, worried about direct competition for the same customers on the same block. United Bodegas of America president Radhamés Rodriguez, who’s become one of the coalition’s most visible voices for expanded wine and liquor access, has been just as clear about the grocery-store threat: “I’m not supporting to have competition, not for him, not for anybody.”
That’s the real shape of the story. Bodegas are being squeezed from two directions by the same city and state government at once — a mayor building subsidized grocery competition on one side, and a decades-old liquor law walling off a growing revenue category on the other. Wine and spirits sales won’t offset a city-subsidized grocery store two doors down. But it’s the one lever New York’s independent retailers can actually pull, and it explains why an industry usually fighting for market share is, for once, fighting for the same law change.
Albany has said no to this coalition every year for almost twenty years. What’s different now is that the businesses asking aren’t just the big ones anymore — and the state’s liquor stores, who’ve held this monopoly since the end of Prohibition, are about to find out whether “us versus them” still works when the “them” includes the corner store next to city hall’s own competition.
Do you want to better understand spirits? May we suggest Be A Beverage Expert (BABE), a guide to understanding wine, beer, spirits, and cocktails.