Why a Brooklyn grocery store is lowering its prices for customers
GREENPOINT, Brooklyn (WABC) -- Inflation hits just about everyone where it hurts -- the wallet. One grocery store in Brooklyn is also feeling the pinch, but they are instead lowering prices for customers.
Young Kim, the owner of Jubilee Market in Greenpoint, spent Friday night repricing the items on the shelves. It is not what he expected to be doing when he started out stocking shelves years ago.
"I'm going against, you know, everything I was taught," he said.
Kim is stuck between a rock and a hard place -- that is the grocery business in 2025.
"There's a lot more competition now," he said.
The big chain stores have the buying power to get better deals from wholesalers and the ability to absorb inflation and attract dads like Anthony Estevez who are looking for a break.
"Sometimes we would go to Trader Joe's in LIC or Williambsurg just to save like 20-30 dollars. It adds up, but honestly if we could do it here two or three blocks from our house, wouldn be amazing," Estevez said.
Kim hears his Greenpoint community's complaints and feels obligated to listen, forgoing the typical markup and slashing the prices on every single item. Even if it means less money in his pocket right now.
"It's not the landlord or even the business owner that decides if a business belongs in a community - it's the actual people that live there," Kim says.
Kim is certainly taking a leap of faith, making it easier for people -- but what does it really mean for him as a business owner trying to survive in New York City?
"Terrified. Just because this is the industry norm of the markup that we do put, which means that if we drastically drop our prices all of a sudden, that also means we could potentially close," he said.
At 34 years old, Kim says he is just married to the store.
He is hoping this risk pays off.
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