Philadelphia ShopRite magnate Jeff Brown plans to launch a run for mayor this week

Philadelphia grocer Jeff Brown is planning to announce this week that he is running for mayor, becoming the first government outsider to jump into the increasingly crowded field of Democrats vying for the mayor’s office.

Brown, who has been eyeing a run for well over a year, will hold an event in West Philadelphia on Wednesday morning to launch his 2023 campaign, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.

He’ll become the fifth Democrat to get into the race to replace term-limited Mayor Jim Kenney, whose second term ends in January 2024. The other candidates are three former City Council members — Cherelle Parker, Derek Green, and Maria Quiñones Sánchez — and the former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart.

Ex-Council member Allan Domb also resigned his seat on Council to explore a run. At least two more Council members, one Democrat and one Republican, are expected to jump into the race. The winner of the Democratic primary is typically well-positioned to prevail in the November general election, given Philadelphia’s heavily Democratic electorate.

» READ MORE: Who is running for Philadelphia mayor in 2023?

Brown, 58, is a fourth-generation grocer who’s owned about a dozen ShopRite stores in the Philadelphia region. He intentionally opened a handful of them in neighborhoods that had been historically underserved by larger grocery chains, and he’s well-known for hiring hundreds of formerly incarcerated people to work in those stores.

In 2009, Brown launched a nonprofit focused on food access in low-income neighborhoods, and the following year he worked with the White House on a grocery expansion initiative and attended the State of the Union address as a guest of former first lady Michelle Obama.

He also drew attention in the early years of Kenney’s tenure for being one of the city’s most prominent and outspoken opponents of the sweetened-beverage tax, one of Kenney’s signature policies.

The 1.5-cent-per-ounce levy was proposed as a way to fund universal pre-K, community schools, and improvements to the city’s recreation centers and parks. Brown argued the tax would disproportionately harm low-income Philadelphians. The tax took effect in January 2017 and has since generated more than $385 million in revenue.

Brown would be the only entrant in the race who has never held elected office, meaning he has no legislative record, no experience working at the highest levels of the local government, and has never run — let alone won — a campaign for political office.

But he has long had connections in the city’s Democratic political class. In addition to being independently wealthy, Brown, supporters say, will likely appeal to the city’s donor class. And a political action committee tied to him reported last year that it had raised nearly a million dollars.

Brown, who grew up in the Far Northeast, lives in Rittenhouse Square, records show.