supermarket in
Kangerlussuaq,
Greenland, July 2010. • – Bolivia's Empresa de Apoyo a la Producción de Alimentos (Emapa, Food Production Support Company), which includes a supermarket chain, is state-owned. • – Most grocery stores in Cuba have been state-owned for decades, due to the government monopoly on retail. Since 2021, some small- and medium-size privately owned grocery stores have been allowed to exist, but typically remain unaffordable for the majority of Cubans. • – In some remote areas of Greenland, state-owned grocery stores provide food and other commodities imported from
Denmark and other countries.
Pilersuisoq is
KNI's grocery retail store chain. • – In 1972, Distribuidora Conasupo (DICONSA, originally Distribuidora e Impulsora Comercial CONASUPO) was created under the state-owned
CONASUPO enterprise to distribute basic food items at subsidized prices. In 1994, it was restructured under
SEDESOL, and by 1997, it operated over 23,000 stores. In September 2024, President
Claudia Sheinbaum announced that in January 2025, the program would be merged with Seguridad Alimentaria Mexicana (SEGALMEX) to create "Tiendas de Bienestar para la Felicidad" ( Well-being Stores for Happiness). The program plans to open 30,000 locations by 2030. , August 2002. • – The
United States Department of Defense offers access to grocery and retail stores across the world as benefit to military members.
Commissaries are operated by the
Defense Commissary Agency and offer subsidized groceries and household goods, while
exchanges are operated separately by each branch of the
United States Armed Forces and sell goods for profit, sometimes operating mini-marts. In
alcoholic beverage control states, liquor stores are owned by the state government. Many stores that have received subsidies have closed within a few years or failed to open. Some federally recognized
American Indian tribes operate their own grocery stores. The
Citizen Potawatomi Nation and the
Choctaw Nation own tribal grocery stores in
Oklahoma. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation's FireLake Foods in
Shawnee, Oklahoma, is the largest tribal grocery store in the United States. In the 21st century, some food infrastructure advocates have supported the establishment of grocery stores through
public–private partnerships to address negative effects associated with
food deserts. • – The city of
Atlanta, in partnership with local supermarket chain Savi Provisions, opened Azalea Fresh Market in September 2025. The store is intended to address food insecurity in a food desert in Downtown Atlanta. The city contributed $3.5 million of the project's $5.4 million. • – Launched in 2012, the Illinois Fresh Food Fund supported the opening of six grocery stores in food deserts. As of 2024, four of them had closed. In 2024,
ProPublica reported on the store's financial struggles, citing that in the first half of the year, it averaged less than half its required sales to break even. The following year, a feasibility study conducted for the city described the municipal grocery store model as "necessary, feasible and implementable." In 2025, city officials announced that they did not apply for state funding for the municipal grocery store, and instead plan to open multiple city-run markets throughout the city. In January 2024, the Grocery Initiative Act came into effect. It authorized the Illinois Grocery Initiative, which aims to address inadequate access to fresh foods, particularly in food deserts, through grants to establish new grocery stores in food deserts and grants to upgrade equipment in existing stores. In 2025, the city of
Venice, Illinois received a $2.4 million state grant from the initiative to build a grocery store. The city plans to own the building and lease it to private investors. • – In
Kansas, several grocery stores are community-supported, municipality-owned, or city-run. In rural Kansas, local governments and communities had stepped in to own and operate grocery stores as private owners have retired. St. Paul Supermarket in
St. Paul, is a municipality-owned business. In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of
Erie bought the Stub's Market grocery store in order to prevent the store from closing. The store was renamed to Erie Market. In September 2024, citing high costs of running the store, the city announced that Erie Market would be leased to River Grocery LLC, which would take over operations and management. • – During the
Great Depression,
New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia established a network of public indoor markets. As of 2025, six of these markets operate under the city's economic development corporation.
Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York City, has called for the creation of city-owned grocery stores in
New York City. Mamdani's proposal is to have a pilot program where 5 public grocery stores are opened, one in each borough. To fund the city-owned grocery stores, Mamdani proposed to redirect funds from the Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) program. He claimed that FRESH spends $140 million and that the city-owned grocery stores would take less than half of that. Newspaper columnist
Timothy P. Carney noted that a report by the office of the
New York City Comptroller stated the program had only given around $30 million in
tax breaks since inception and had an average yearly cost of $3.3 million. Criticism of the proposal has also come from private business owners, including
bodega owners. The organization United Bodegas of America and
John Catsimatidis, a billionaire owner of a supermarket chain, have criticized public grocery stores as harmful to private businesses and their workers. • – During the
2025 Seattle mayoral election, incumbent mayor
Bruce Harrell and
Katie Wilson, the eventual winner, proposed that the city provide land for grocery stores as a means to address food deserts. At the state level, during the 2026 legislative session, State Representative
Darya Farivar introduced House Bill 2313. It would allow cities to use
eminent domain to acquire property for public grocery stores in underserved areas and to raise funds through capital grants and
tax increment financing. The bill did not advance from committee. • –
Madison, Wisconsin has plans to open its first city-owned grocery store in a food desert on Madison's South Side, operated by Maurer's Urban Market. Originally scheduled to open by the end of 2023, the store is began construction in February 2026. • – During the administration of
Hugo Chávez, many supermarkets were nationalized in 2010. These supermarkets were among his administration's more popular policies. Poor and low-income shoppers were more likely to frequent government-owned supermarkets, while wealthier shoppers more often frequented privately owned supermarkets. When oil prices collapsed during the administration of Chávez's successor
Nicolás Maduro, state-owned supermarkets struggled to import food during the economic crisis. Nationalized under the administration of Hugo Chávez, the chain was later reprivatized. ==Asia==