So how's Zoo yorks pop up grocery stores coming along
Posted by SC on 2/19/2026, 11:37:05
Strapped New Yorkers swarm chaotic Mamdani-inspired free grocery store pop-up: We’re ‘in pain’
February 19, 2026
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On Sunday in a busy stretch of restaurants and boutiques in the West Village, hundreds of New Yorkers queued up outside a pop-up shop offering free groceries.
“New Yorkers are in pain,” Nick from Queens, New York, one of several people Fox News Digital interviewed outside the pop-up, said as he waited to grab pasta sauce, bath soap and a bag of Tide Pods.
The scene was underscored by the city’s cost of living woes and anxiety over who would get a yellow ticket granting entry to the small shop before they “sold out” of goods.
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The pop-up was opened Feb. 12 as a five-day store by cryptocurrency-based prediction market Polymarket. It comes as Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani advances a proposal for city-run grocery stores aimed at easing rising food costs and broader affordability pressures.
It was billed as New York City’s first free grocery store, with critics casting it as a stunt riffing on Mamdani’s proposal as the prediction-market company faces heightened scrutiny from regulators in various states, including New York.
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