People are giving you uninformed answers, but to be fair, you just could have searched it yourself.

The stores haven't even opened yet. The first are expected to open by the end of 2027.

The plan says they get the real estate from the city for free or very cheap. Also subsidies for groceries in the "core basket".

The City, through NYCEDC, will provide the foundation and deliver grocery-ready sites, cover rent and property taxes, fund initial buildout, and establish a single public brand for all N.Y.C. Groceries locations. The City will also set clear requirements for affordability, job quality, transparency, and performance.

To support this effort, the City has committed $70 million in capital funding for store construction and fit-out.

So the answer is city subsidies, payed for with tax dollars.

Where those dollars will be coming from within the city budget has not yet been announced, but seeing as they have time until end of 2027, there's likely going to be a lot of budget-shuffling and negotiations until a budget-position is going to be revealed.

Might be in the NYC budget already, but I don't see reporting on it, nor do I have the time to go over that.

In my opinion it's a relatively good and easy way of redistributing money from top to bottom. You know, like schools, libraries, public pools (or free universities in better countries). Because it directly addresses a need of the poorest New Yorkers without just handing them money and implements a "food as a human right" response to corpos profiting off of societies need for groceries.