They only mention SNAP in passing, but I guarantee it features large on the spreadsheets back at HQ. Everyone I've known who was on it seemed a little nostalgic about buying expensive food they wouldn't normally. (However, my sample size is two).
If you spend 4.60 per day on unprocessed food and a little meat you can get high quality food. But you need to cook it. Or you can basically starve on chips and soda. Now if your unemployed / underemployed and have free time foor cooking it's not unreasonable to shop at whole foods. Assuming you don't need to watch kids / elderly / or the disabled.
Though transportation is often a major issue keeping people shopping at the corner store.
There are 2,040,053 SNAP recipients in IL, at an average of $138 per month, total benefits equal $281,527,314. Per month. Even if only a quarter live in Chicago, that's still nearly $1 billion a year in SNAP benefits in Chicago alone.
I understood the point, I have been on SNAP before and I am aware that $138 isn't a whole lot of money for food. I was merely stating that there are at least $1 billion dollars of SNAP money per year in Chicago and Whole Foods is trying to get some of that money by being present. It is not the only reason, just one of many. Also, SNAP recipients pay for food with cash too, it's not like being on SNAP means you cannot spend other income on food.
The average SNAP recipient has other income to spend on food. The benefit is a supplement. Except at the maximum end, it's not intended to fully fund your food purchases. Those "live off the average SNAP benefit" publicity stunts are disingenuous.
A few years ago, I indulged in an experiment: I'd try to live off the SNAP amount for a month. I assumed a budget of $110, and tried to make 3 meals/day out of it. I had to resort to all sorts of trickery to make it work, but I did; by shopping at Mexican grocery stores and swinging by farmers' markets at closing time (when they have to get rid of their produce, and hence offer massive discounts) I was able to survive. It wasn't easy, and I for sure wasn't eating organic foods!
I've talked to some Whole Foods employees about this. Cashiers at the location I frequent have estimated that anywhere from 10% to 30% of their sales are made to people using SNAP. It's hard for me to make sense of it given how much a grocery bill at WF is and how little assistance SNAP offers, but those were the 'numbers'.
I had been know to call it "Whole Paycheck" in the past, but I've found prices not to be too bad if you're selective, such as their house-brand products.
Exactly. You CAN spend a lot of money at Whole Foods--and I'm often tempted to-- but you don't really have to. Interestingly in Fresh Pond in Cambridge, there's a Whole Foods that's the only supermarket near a housing project though it's also convenient for people on their way out to the suburbs.
Still, $4.60 a day? Even when shopping steep sales and eating vegan, I'm not sure they could make that work. Oranges and apples are sometimes (like right now) less than a dollar a pound, but generally they cost between a dollar and two dollars a pound. Nuts and seeds are up over $10 a pound. And if they want to buy processed foods like pasta, the quality will be no different than they could get elsewhere for much less money.
I think the amount of Link card (the payment mechanism for SNAP in IL) use we see at WF is actually the byproduct of fraud or wastefulness. I remember in the 90's, in an inner-city property complex that one of my friend's parents owned, that food stamps (which were much more like food cash than pre-loaded cards) were traded amongst residents and other community members for either drugs or cash. I assume that, at the top of the line in those transactions, some well-off group of people ended up with several times the monthly allotment for SNAP and would just spend it like a typical price-insensitive rich person.
I'm not sure that's even possible now, but what I've found with government programs is that no matter the lengths they go to to insulate themselves from fraud, that in the face of creative people who are incentivised to cheat the system, it never seems to be enough to actually protect themselves.
