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
How ‘claim sharks’ cost Ohio veterans thousands as they seek VA benefits
For-profit, unaccredited veterans’ claims services, often dubbed “claim sharks” by veterans’ affairs officials, are violating federal law by charging Ohio veterans thousands of dollars in fees — in many cases far higher than the benefits they receive — when they file disability claims.
Many of these organizations are at work in Northeast Ohio, local officials said, even though area veterans can receive help with their applications for free.
Veterans should never pay to obtain the benefits they have earned, said Jon Reiss, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Veterans Service Commission.
In Ohio, he said, there are organizations, both government and nonprofit, that provide services to veterans free of charge. Every county in the state has a Veterans Service Commission funded by taxpayers. The commissions do not charge veterans for help navigating benefits.
Commissions in each county must hire a Veterans Service Officer to assist with applications for local, state and federal veterans benefits. Cuyahoga County has 10 individuals who are accredited.
“Claim sharks” exploit the complex and time-consuming nature of the VA claims process while promising to help veterans obtain or increase their benefits, according to the Veterans Legal Center. They frequently assert that if a veteran works with them, approval of their claim is guaranteed.
Ohio House Bill 708 would govern the practices of providing veterans with claim consulting assistance. While the bill would set limits on some of the unaccredited services’ practices, such as charging more than $5 to obtain a military discharge record, it would allow the agencies to lock veterans into contracts.
How veterans can avoid fees for filing benefits claims
- If a solicitor approaches you about making a claim for veteran benefits, the first question you should ask is whether they are from a VA-accredited service.
- Research through the Office of General Counsel to see if the organization is VA accredited or not.
- Contact one of Ohio’s 88 County Veterans Service offices for help. A state veterans services representative is also available via email at contactus@dvs.ohio.gov or by phone at 614-644-0898.
- Conduct your own research before reaching out to any claim services.
They could also charge up to five times the monthly increase in the amount awarded to a veteran from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in compensation for their work on the claim.
The legislation doesn’t explain exactly what the “five times” language in the bill means, said David Root, the state legislative chair for Veterans of Foreign Wars of Ohio. “That’s currently something that needs to be addressed if [the legislation] goes too much further.”
“I’m afraid that, ultimately, they’ll be able to charge the biggest amount that they can, which is what they’ve been doing all along,” he said of the unaccredited agencies.
Currently, each agency runs its operations differently, Root explained. “There’s nothing requiring them to do a specific thing, so they can do pretty much whatever they want without any penalties, which is ridiculous.”
HB 708 “doesn’t have enough penalties” for the unaccredited agencies, and “they can still operate as unaccredited representatives, and that’s something that we definitely cannot accept,” Root said.
Akron Documenters discovered this story at various Summit County Veterans Service Commission board meetings.
For example, under HB 708’s current language, if a veteran receives a disability benefits check for $180.42 a month, which is 10% on the VA’s sliding benefit scale, and has a contract with an unaccredited organization, the organization could charge them $902.10. Whether the veteran would pay the amount every month for a period of time or as a one-time payment would depend on their contract with the claim shark — it’s unclear whether HB 708 would change that, Root said.
Some of the unaccredited agencies also receive compensation based on benefit increases a veteran receives later, which means the payments can go even higher. And, Root said, some veterans can’t get assistance from legitimate service providers after they’re locked into a contract with an unaccredited agency.
“There’s so many things they’re doing that are totally wrong. I couldn’t begin to list them all,” he said. “It’s really hurting those veterans that do fall into that trap and sign that contract with them.”
Bill’s sponsor says veterans should be protected, have choices
Rep. Steve Demetriou (R), who represents Ohio House District 35, is a co-sponsor of HB 708 along with 22 others, including Akron-area Rep. Jack Daniels. Demetriou said he supports the bill because he wants to protect veterans and that it puts “guardrails” on assistance provided by unaccredited organizations.
“Veterans should be protected from anyone who would mislead them, overcharge them, or take advantage of a complicated claims process,” Demetriou said in a statement emailed to Signal Akron.
“At the same time, protecting veterans also means respecting their ability to make their own decisions,” he said.
The pending legislation “puts clear guardrails in place for private assistance, including written agreements and disclosures, limits on fees, prohibitions against guaranteeing benefits, and requirements that payment be tied to a successful increase in benefits,” Demetriou said.
Victoria Collier is a co-owner of Patriot Angels, a private company that assists veterans with long-term-care plans, pension claims and appeals. She is an accredited attorney with the VA who said agencies like hers get lumped into the “claim sharks” category, even though they operate within the legal parameters set by the VA.
She is concerned HB 708 will restrict services that veterans’ families choose to purchase.
Her private agency, which is unaccredited because federal law restricts accreditation to recognized nonprofit, state, county or tribal groups, charges veterans for consultations related to pre-filing claims and long-term-care assessment. They do not charge, Collier said, to file benefits claims or charge afterward for anything that is claim-related.
Collier said her agency is “100 percent aligned with bills that want to protect veterans from fraud and other such things.” But bills like HB 708, she said, “are overarching, and they prevent consumers from being able to decide who they want to use, even after adequate disclosures have been made.”
Cuyahoga County’s Veterans Service Commission is opposed to any provision — whether in House Bill 708 or elsewhere — that permits charging veterans “any amount for assistance in processing claims or obtaining military documents,” according to a letter Reiss sent to lawmakers.
“Veterans have already paid the price through their service and sacrifice. The benefits they receive are not gifts — they are earned rights,” the letter states. “Placing a financial barrier between a veteran and the benefits they deserve is fundamentally wrong. Charging even a nominal fee for claims assistance or document
retrieval undermines the principle that these benefits are a matter of justice, not commerce.”
The letter also notes the services are already available for free and that
veterans, especially elderly, disabled or those in crisis, may feel pressured to pay for services. “This is not hypothetical; we have seen examples in other states where ‘reasonable fees’ quickly became a business model targeting veterans,” Reiss wrote.
HB 708 is currently sitting in a House committee and has not moved forward since Feb. 25, shortly after it was introduced.
Here’s what Ohio House Bill 708 would require
The current version of the bill would:
- Limit what unaccredited organizations can charge to no more than $5 to obtain military discharge records, called a Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty, on behalf of the veteran.
- Require that both parties sign off on an acknowledgement of where free services are available and how to contact the local veterans service commission.
- Require that the unaccredited organizations provide a contract that states the fee amount and that they are not accredited. The contract must also state the solicitor’s name and address.
- Require that unaccredited organizations share with the county recorder’s office where the solicitation of the veteran occurred along with a copy of the contract.
HB 708 would limit how agencies can go about finding vets
The bill also sets limits on how the agencies soliciting veterans for their business can find and assist them.
If the bill passes, such agencies could not:
- Utilize call or data centers to find veterans’ personal information.
- Receive compensation for referrals.
- Guarantee a successful outcome or specific amount of benefits.
- Use a veteran’s personal log-in information to access medical, financial and government benefits information.
To avoid situations similar to this, Ohio veterans can receive benefits and file claims through the Summit County Veterans Service Commission or commissions in the counties in which they live. Do soing will help avoid debt accumulation and any possible fees associated with claims. The wait time after filing a claim is less than 180 days.
Ohio House Bill 961 could add more protections for veterans
Ohio House Bill 961, introduced shortly after HB 708, would penalize unaccredited organizations that assist veterans with submitting claims, said Rep. Sean Brennan (D), who represents Ohio House District 14 in the Cleveland area.
“All we want to do is make it clear that Ohio is going to uphold federal law, and if you are helping veterans, that you have to be accredited, and if you’re not, there are going to be penalties involved under Ohio law,” Brennan said.
There are currently no penalties for the unaccredited agencies, he said, calling their activities “illegal.”
Signal Cleveland’s Rachel Dissell contributed additional reporting to this piece.
