Recently, the Washington Post reported that “more cities and states across the country … are experimenting with the concept of publicly supported grocery stores,” as the socialist candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani has called for New York City to build.
They reported on one in Kansas City, known as KC Sun Fresh, open for seven years, with cash flow and “social issues” problems.
At a community meeting last year, [Emmet] Pierson Jr. [who leads the nonprofit that leases the site from the city] played videos of security incidents so graphic he gave a warning in advance — a naked woman parading through the store throwing bags of chips to the ground, another person urinating in the vestibule and a couple fornicating on the lawn of the library in broad daylight.
KC Sun Fresh had 17 million public bucks in the rearview mirror and was near death at the time the article in the Post was published about a month ago.
It is now dead.
Kansas City's subsidized supermarket, which has been compared to Mamdani's NYC grocery store proposal, is shutting down permanently.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) August 12, 2025
It cites "unforeseen circumstances beyond our control." https://t.co/WaUQ8I6ibJ pic.twitter.com/mRFwv0dqDy
It opened in 2018 and was run for a time by a private grocer.
In 2022, Mr. Pierson’s non-profit, mentioned by the Post, took over.
By early this year, just seven years later, it was on fumes.
The local mayor, Quinton Lucas, a Democrat in his second term, said … "he [saw] two challenges: The first w[as] saving the current store. ‘Changing consumer behavior w[as] another,’ he said.”
He meant thievery. Unfortunately, the people involved, who were arrested, were set free right away. (This, by the way, is what I fear in Trump’s takeover of D.C. It’s all well and good to have D.C. Attorney Jeanine Pirro send up charges against thieves and robbers, but she’ll be sending them to the same liberal judges who regard revolving doors as “compassionate.”)
With the perps continuously going in and out, as they did in Kansas City, it allowed them “to hop on the local bus system — free since the pandemic — and head back to the same location” and offend again. It got so bad at KC Fresh, according to the local police chief there, that the perps were all recognizable on sight.
The store then entered its predictable death throes: bare shelves, high crime, few shoppers, and not one of the lefties interviewed in the article realized it was their own soft-on-crime policies that led to it. They saw the problems. Literally naked and throwing potato chips in front of them. But none of them talked about getting harder on crime. They just shrugged and said they need to “change behavior.”
Well, yes. But it was the behavior of the lefties in charge which needed to change and could’ve changed quickly — if only they had.
Yes, the perps are absolutely responsible for their own behavior, but the repeat offenders were 100% on the policies of those Democrats in charge. That they could’ve changed — but didn’t. Or wouldn’t. Either way, it started, and KC Sun Fresh ended, with them.
Image: Screen shot from X