The core problem is zoning. NYC makes it either impossible or prohibitively expensive to find an acceptable site for a large-format grocery store. In Manhattan,

The core problem is zoning. NYC makes it either impossible or prohibitively expensive to find an acceptable site for a large-format grocery store. In Manhattan, all recently built grocery stores have had to be in basements to work around restrictive zoning: https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1054518549971111936 https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/105451854997111193... However, there are only so many buildings with acceptable basement layouts, and only so many neighborhood that are profitably enough to merit the additional capital and operational cost of a supermarket in a basement.