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.
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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
Cleveland groups can apply for police commission violence prevention grants
The Cleveland Community Police Commission is accepting new grant applications as it continues to clear a backlog of awards going back to 2023.
Awarding grants to community groups working in violence prevention, restorative justice or mediation is one of the commission’s duties. The city charter mandates that the commission receive 0.5% of the amount budgeted for the Cleveland Division of Police to fund the grants. That came to almost $1.4 million this year.
But the process got off to a rocky start. Public comment periods at commission meetings have frequently included pleas from people whose organizations had been waiting years for promised funds.
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New grant applications due soon
The new grant application is open through Nov. 30. The commission expects to complete the process in March. Groups applying must be based in Cleveland and be a nonprofit with what’s called 501(c)(3) status or a fiscal agent (another nonprofit willing to handle the money).
There are two categories for grants. The commission will award up to 15 grants to organizations with an annual budget under $1 million, a record of service to a neighborhood and limited foundation or government support.
Another five grants will go to organizations serving populations named in the city charter, including immigrants and refugees, the LGBTQ+ community and people affected by police or gun violence.
The commission can award grants of up to $50,000 on its own authority. Larger grants are possible but will take longer.
More information and an online application are available on the commission’s web site.
Past recipients include the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland, Spread the Love Foundation and Shelter the People Cleveland. Those names appear on a list of 2024 grantees that was provided by a city council staffer. The commission has not responded to Signal Cleveland’s requests for a complete list.
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