The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday that stores and farmers’ markets will have to sell far more healthy food if they want to keep accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits this fall. The usda new snap retailer rules more than double the food requirements and tighten the standards to seven varieties across four staple categories: protein, grains, dairy, and fruits and vegetables.
At Family Food Inc. in Little Village, that change lands on shelves already heavy with ramen, potato chips and other packaged processed foods. The store sells Apple Jacks cereal but no apples, lemon cake mix but no lemons, and strawberry flavored slushies but no strawberries. It does carry avocados, onions, potatoes and bananas, but owner Baltazar Enriquez said 40% of the business comes from SNAP and losing that revenue would make the store unprofitable. “This will definitely break corner stores and ma and pa businesses,” he said.
The department’s goal is to steer more federal food money toward healthier choices, and the agency said the new standards also increase perishable food requirements while eliminating loopholes that had allowed some snack foods to count toward staple-food quotas. Many grocery stores and produce markets are unlikely to be affected. The pressure falls hardest on small corner stores, which often do not have the money, refrigeration or storage space to meet the new bar. Enriquez said, “Little corner stores, ma and pa shops, don't have the money to buy the refrigerators, don't have the place to store fruits and vegetables.”
For Nate Harris, the effect goes beyond store owners. He said the rules will severely limit the number of retailers that can accept SNAP and leave shoppers with fewer options. “So consumers ultimately are going to have less options,” he said. “They're now going to go farther and get on public transportation to get to a grocery store in order to get the same goods that they would be able to previously get at a convenience store.”
The timing is especially sharp in Illinois, where as many as 150,000 people already lost SNAP benefits under stricter eligibility rules in the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Those state rules require people to prove at least 20 hours per week of work, volunteering or training to stay eligible. Enriquez said he has used the corner store in a pinch for milk, eggs and diapers for 30 years, and now he is staring at a business model that may not survive the federal change if SNAP spending drops with it.
The question the USDA answered on Thursday is simple: which retailers can keep playing in SNAP? The answer is that stores with real grocery sections should be fine, but the small corner shops that have long filled daily gaps for low-income customers will be the ones most likely pushed out when the new rules take effect in the fall.