New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday announced a deal with President Donald Trump that would give small business owners who accept SNAP benefits an extension of a new rule that requires certain items to be stocked.
“I have spoken to President Trump and [United States Secretary of Agriculture (USDA) Brooke] Rollins, and as a result of those conversations, the president has agreed to give small business owners at least a 90-day extension to comply with a rule that would have affected tens of thousands of snap-accepting grocery stores and bodegas nationwide,” the mayor said at City Hall.
Mamdani thanked Trump and Rollins “for their consideration of New Yorkers and the hardship that this would have imposed on millions of Americans. And in doing this, President Trump has delivered relief to small business owners across our city and across America.”
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On Sept. 4, the USDA issued new rules requiring at least seven different varieties of food in four different categories of dairy, grains, proteins, and fruits and vegetables, he said.
“For corporate grocery giants, these requirements posed little challenge, but the story was different for our neighborhood corner stores and bodegas,” he explained. “Many New Yorkers use their Snap benefits at the bodegas that line our streets and sit at the corners of our intersections, the beating hearts of so many of our neighborhoods.”
Originally, the USDA said that businesses had to meet those new standards by Nov. 4, or they could no longer accept SNAP.
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“In a moment, the lives of more than a million New Yorkers and tens of millions more across America were thrown into chaos,” he said. “Working people, already reckoning with a shortage of affordable places to buy whatever it is they needed for their home, soaring costs at the register and food deserts across the five boroughs, now feared that the few local places they could shop would no longer be able to accept their benefits, and a small business owners struggle to meet these new requirements in an impossibly short time frame.”
Mamdani said that in the Bronx, SNAP can account for as much as 30% of a bodega’s sales.
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Businesses will now have three more months to come into compliance.
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“When I ran for this office, I promised New Yorkers that I would work with anyone and everyone to lower costs in our city and to improve New Yorkers’ lives,” Mamdani said at the end of his speech. “I want to thank New Yorkers for their trust, and President Trump for working with us to do exactly that.”
