For years, Cleveland residents who received SNAP benefits had an extra incentive to buy fruit and vegetables at farmers markets and Dave’s grocery stores – they’d get matching dollars through a program called “produce perks.”
Residents can still get up to a $25 match at farmers markets in Cuyahoga County. But after federal grants supporting it got canceled last year, residents no longer get up to $10 for buying produce at Dave’s Supermarkets.
Leaders are eager to bring back the program, which incentivized healthy food options. Its loss is a double-whammy: a hit to local grocery stores and to consumers who are also facing rising prices, said Morgan Taggart, the director of Food Access Raises Everyone, a Cleveland-based initiative that works on produce perks.
“The pause of the program at retailers has been significant for SNAP recipients in Cuyahoga County,” Taggart said. “ … Not having that extra incentive to be able to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at a time when there’s so many other external constraints on people’s food budgets and food purchasing has made it difficult.”
Dave’s is the only grocery store in Cuyahoga County that participated in the program. It did so beginning in 2018.
Then, last spring, the Trump administration canceled a three-year, $2.8 million grant that helped fund produce perks across the state. The administration said that the grant provided funding for programs that promote or take part in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or others that unlawfully discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics.
(The grant had a goal of deepening Produce Perk’s impact “within underserved communities” and aimed to partner with 15 businesses owned by Black, indigenous or people of color.)
To fill the funding gap, Produce Perks Midwest sought out foundations that might be able to pick up the slack as the federal government retreated, said Tevis Foreman, the executive director of the statewide nonprofit Produce Perks Midwest. In Cuyahoga County, they raised enough money to keep offering the produce perks program at local farmers markets. But it couldn’t afford to keep up the partnership with Dave’s, which hands out “hundreds of thousands” more dollars than the farmers markets, Foreman said. Their produce sales far outpace farmers markets because they serve more SNAP customers and generally are open more hours.
“The budget just simply wasn’t there to do the volume of produce perks dollars that we do with Dave’s,” Foreman said. The nonprofit paused the partnership with Dave’s near the end of 2025, he said.
Foreman is hoping that the program will soon return to Dave’s and to more than a dozen counties across the state that couldn’t find any local funding options. The federal government opened an application for a similar grant program earlier this year, and Produce Perks Midwest applied. Foreman expects to hear back this fall, he said.
Aaron Saltzman, a co-president of Dave’s Supermarkets, did not reply to a request for comment about the program’s pause.
Suggested Reading
Ohio appeals court rules EdChoice unconstitutional. Students keep vouchers for now
Produce perks a longstanding Cleveland benefit
Produce Perks’ current focus on farmers markets in Cuyahoga County is, in a way, a return to its roots.
The program started in Cleveland around 2009 after Taggart and other food advocates got foundations on board to fund an experiment at a couple of farmers markets: match SNAP spending dollar-for-dollar. Other cities in Ohio set up similar programs at the same time.
Around 2015, federal dollars started becoming available. The loose network of food advocates, farmers markets, researchers and universities decided they needed to create a statewide nonprofit to coordinate nutrition incentives and apply for federal dollars. Produce Perks Midwest was created in 2017.
That same year, Produce Perks Midwest piloted the idea of expanding the program into retail stores at Dave’s Mercado on Cleveland’s near West Side. They gave away $5 coupons for fruits and vegetables when residents spent their SNAP benefits. Customers more than doubled their spending on produce when using the coupon as compared to without it, data showed.
When the nonprofit successfully received federal money in 2018, it was able to expand to more Dave’s locations and to other grocery stores across the state. It offered a coupon for up to $10 off future produce purchases if customers spent a matching amount using SNAP benefits.
They received another federal grant in 2021 and again in 2024, but that one was ultimately canceled.
Dave’s an ‘early adopter’ of the program
Why offer producer perks at Dave’s? For one, the program wanted to invest as much as possible in locally owned stores, Foreman said. For another, the company was willing to adjust their systems for the program, he added. The stores set up their cash registers to take note of customers buying produce with SNAP benefits and automatically print out their earned coupon.
“It was bumpy waters at first trying to figure out the point-of-sale systems, but they invested in the effort,” Foreman said. “They were early adopters.”
But the program’s cut is another hit to revenue at Dave’s, a grocery store chain that’s remained in the city of Cleveland despite economic headwinds. While it closed three grocery stores in the city over the past seven years, it also opened one at East 61st Street and Chester Avenue.
Dan Saltzman, co-president of Dave’s Markets, said in an interview with Signal Cleveland this spring that it saw revenue from SNAP fall approximately 10% over the past year — not a normal fluctuation.
“It puts a lot of strain on our business model,” he said at the time.
NAVIGATING SNAP
Halloween is serious business for members of the Cleveland Haunt Club
A motley crew of Halloween enthusiasts, horror-film professionals and home decorating aficionados have created a club just for Northeast Ohioans who live for the spooky season – and thousands of people have joined.
The Cleveland Haunt Club offers year-round activities and events to promote, educate and support amateur and professional haunters. Almost 34,000 people follow its Facebook page.
The club’s founder and president, Jeff Hartz, said he started the Cleveland Haunt Club based on his experience living in Detroit and participating in the Motor City Haunt Club.
“I really liked what I saw there,” he said. “I told them I’m going to steal everything you guys are doing here and take it back to Cleveland. And they’re like, that’s great, and we actually did. And it’s become a very successful group.”
What we do in the shadows
The Cleveland Haunt Club meets about once a month all over Northeast Ohio. Meetings often feature talks and demonstrations from industry professionals like authors, set builders or haunted house owners. The organization regularly hosts outings for members, like a recent trip to the Mansfield Reformatory.
The club’s annual Haunted Garage Sale attracts thousands of people and has outgrown its locations three times. The sale features nearly 150 professional Halloween vendors selling props and display items. Around 15,000 people attended the event this year at the Ross Expo Center in Lorain.
The organization supports St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital through the “Skeletons for St. Jude” national fundraising effort – in 2024, it was the largest fundraising group in the country for St. Jude.
Membership in the Cleveland Haunt Club costs $20 per year. Paid membership is not required to attend meetings, said Hartz. “It just helps us do more things for our members, you know. We can put on movie nights, ghost tours. A lot of these things you have to prepay to get into, so this way we have the leverage that we can do that. We encourage people to do the membership, but it’s not mandatory.”
Christine Kiessling, vice president and co-founder of the Cleveland Haunt Club, said the best thing about the group is bringing people together.
“We’ve got everybody, from all walks of life,” Kiessling said. “I’m a bank teller. We’ve got teachers, actors, makeup artists, all sorts of people.”
The ‘Royal Scare’ in North Royalton
Paul Tylicki joined the club in 2017. He has been creating home Halloween displays for over 25 years, first in Garfield Heights and now at his home in North Royalton. (He’s at 12043 Padua Drive, better known during Halloween season as the “Royal Scare.”) Tylicki said he was overwhelmed by the work and size of the display and temporarily quit in 2020.
“I was kind of worried that all my best Halloweens were behind me. Then I started having grandkids, and my daughters kind of guilted me into the fact that my grandkids would never be able to experience my home haunt.”
Tylicki returned to building the “Royal Scare” in 2024. This year’s display is 1800s-themed, with scenes featuring historical and literary figures including Edgar Allen Poe and Jack the Ripper.
“I’m more into the art fact … rather than, you know, trying to scare people,” said Tylicki. “You know how they have all those Norman Rockwell pictures or paintings, and you look at them and think, ‘Wow, I wish I could just climb into that and be part of that painting?’ That’s how I feel about my home haunt.”
“It’s a work of art that you can actually walk into and be part of,” he said.
Tylicki has been able to use the Cleveland Haunt Club for networking opportunities to help bring traffic to his home. “I wasn’t very computer-savvy or anything like that, to promote myself. So the Haunt Club was a huge way to promote my home.”
A 13-foot Lego skeleton in Olmsted Falls
Member Alan Perkins’ home at 7569 River Road in Olmsted Falls has gone viral on social media for his display featuring a 13-foot Lego skeleton. Perkins has presented at several Cleveland Haunt Club meetings teaching attendees some of the skills needed to build their own large-scale Halloween displays.
“I think the best thing that I get out of the Haunt Club is just insight from other people and shared experiences,” he said. “[Presenters] can show the tips and tricks of how you can set up something in your own home on a window or a site display, and that information is something that used to be very hard to glean. When people are willing to share experiences and skill sets, especially in a club-type format like this, that’s helpful.”
Pro Tip: Frightmaps.com is a free app that maps Halloween home displays and other haunted attractions in your area. Search for this year’s Cleveland Haunt Guide to find Halloween homes near you
