Every time you grab a salad, fruit or steak from a New York City grocery or supermarket, you’re putting your trust in a scale.
Some merchants are sorely testing that trust: City inspectors found hundreds of broken or miscalibrated food scales at groceries and supermarkets between 2023 and 2025, a NYCity News Service analysis of records found. Among the violators were Gristedes, Westside Market and Whole Foods stores.
Faulty scales could lead to overcharging customers, hitting New Yorkers where it hurts amid rising food prices and threats to SNAP benefits. City inspection reports don’t specify whether scales are over- or underestimating the weight of food, but some shoppers are almost certainly paying more than they should.
And despite a wave of recent inspector hires that boosted the ranks to 62 — among them, 34 whose duties include scale inspections — city officials say they currently cannot check every scale annually as required, due to the sheer number of businesses that use the devices.
The NYCity News Service’s analysis of inspection data found that, between 2023 and 2025, DCWP inspectors visited more than 4,000 grocery stores. Nearly a quarter of groceries were cited for at least one violation and inspectors confiscated 100 scales.
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