That'll cause competition with the private owned stores and force them to push down prices / raise wages until their profit margins are gone, putting them out of business.

The only entity that will buy the defunct stores will be the state , or maybe some actual non-profits , and now the state owns all the grocery stores and communism will be achieved. Then we get bread lines, is that what you want? /s.

Being government-run, the store will obviously have:

• a poor selection of products leaving you with no choice
• ugly packaging meaning only the poors will go there
• long waiting lists for entry
• yearly, quarterly and monthly subscriptions, all required and renewed seperately, taking hours in a queue and three trips to the social services hq each to renew
• quotas on all items, groups of items and time limited - whenever one is passed the rest don't matter
• no added value like delivery or good customer service
• no market research or innovation
• no incentive to do better or improve service
• an active loss of money due to bueraucratic ineficiencies

(Likewise, also spined it (almost) as much as possible.)

The reasoning is actually that a food desert means greater revenues from a larger market circle for the desert wanderers to travel so they can eat. Company gets most of the profit without offering convenient service from the captives.

There is zero reason to run grocery stores at a loss. Competition that doesn't extort as strongly as other cartel members does screw over the cartel.