Bodega and barber shop rules simplified under OPEN plan
This week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a video on X showing himself feeding sheets of paper labeled “RED TAPE,” “cumbersome fees and fines,” and “a permit you need just to serve ice-cream” into a paper shredder before tossing the shreds into the air with business owners and city officials. The video, set to Wu Tang Clan’s “If Time Is Money,” announced “OPEN for Small Business” — a package of more than 50 reforms Mamdani detailed at a press conference in the Bronx.
At the press conference, Mamdani listed changes including: bodega owners will no longer need a separate license to sell products such as fruit and flowers outside their store; restaurants will no longer need a separate frozen dessert permit to sell ice cream; barber shops will renew their permits every three years instead of annually; street fair vendor permit fees will be reduced; restaurant inspections will be accelerated; and equipment registration fees will be eliminated for one year.
The corresponding executive order Mamdani signed Monday expands the NYC BEST program, which provides case workers to small business owners. Under the expansion, each of the city’s 180,000 small businesses — which employ an estimated 1 million people — will be assigned a dedicated project manager to help identify and apply for required licenses and permits, coordinate inspections, and manage compliance issues before administrative hearings.
Dawn Kelly, owner of Nourish Cafe in Jamaica, Queens, said she was “over the moon” about the reforms. She launched her business with BEST’s help in 2016, and her case worker “held my hand from the idea to cutting the ribbon,” she said. Kelly had previously flagged to the mayor’s office that her staff had to travel from outer Queens to the Upper West Side to take a three-day food-handling certificate course offered at only one location in the entire city. During the press conference, Deputy Mayor Julie Su called out Kelly by name when announcing that the city would now offer the food-handling course at multiple locations.
“These people are serious. They really care about small businesses,” Kelly said. “They get shit done.”
The reforms come at a difficult time for small businesses. A city study found that 3,540 businesses opened in the second quarter of 2025, while 8,400 similar-sized businesses closed — the lowest ebb of new business formation in five years.
The announcement has drawn notice across the political spectrum. The libertarian magazine Reason, which has criticized Mamdani’s proposals for government-run grocery stores and rent freezes, wrote that “if Mamdani’s critics are principled, they will welcome these pro-small business reforms.”
JW Mason, an associate professor of economics at John Jay College at the City University of New York, said the reforms are “completely consistent with a democratic socialist approach to governance.” He argued that “pro-business government” historically means catering to large, politically connected companies. “Governments that call themselves pro-business don’t particularly serve the interests of these smaller businesses that New York depends on,” Mason said. “In some sense a lot of what being a socialist mayor, a socialist in office, means is making government simply work better.”
At High Beam Coffee Roastery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, co-owner Vicki Forshee said it often feels like large businesses such as Amazon operate with more tax breaks and less oversight, while small businesses “have to climb a crazy mountain just to survive.” Her co-owner, Selina Ullrich, a food industry veteran, described health department inspections as “shakedowns” that prioritize penalizing restaurants over obscure regulations rather than ensuring food safety. “There’s rules where nobody can explain why the rule exists,” Ullrich said. “It’s a rule that is impossible to comply with, but we all just agree that we just have to deal with it.” She said she is excited about the reforms: “It seems like he wants to accomplish things versus just talking about accomplishing things.”
Mamdani’s critics on the right have sought to portray him as anti-business. In May, Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for New York governor, alleged on Fox News that Mamdani wants to take property from bodega and grocery store owners. The chyron read: “THE LEFT’S PLAN: CONTROL AND CONFISCATE.”
Kelly, a longtime supporter of former Mayor Eric Adams, said she now backs Mamdani. “I don’t really care about those labels nowadays,” she said. “I like that he stands for making sure nobody seems to feel marginalized, like we’re all in this together, we all win together. If that’s what socialism is, I’m all for it!”