With the price of milk products rising in markets everywhere, Friday marked the introduction of an Add Milk pilot program in Waco, aimed at encouraging users of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to keep buying the “superfood.”
The program available at Jubilee Food Market effectively refunds the full value of milk purchases for use on other SNAP-eligible items. It provides money back with the purchase of any size “skim or any 1% fluid cow’s milk, including lactose-free, that is unsweetened and unflavored and meets FDA and local standards on fluid milk Vitamin A and D levels,” according to the program’s website, which can be found at baylor.edu/addmilk.
A trial version of the program has been running in West Texas for about a year, and the expansion to Waco is a partnership between the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty and Jubilee Food Market, a nonprofit grocery store sponsored by Mission Waco. Jubilee in Waco is one of the first expansions, along with a few ShopRite locations in New Jersey.
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“With Waco being our home, we wanted to test out things here,” said Jeremy Everett, executive director and founder of Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty. “We knew from day one that we had a great partner in the Jubilee Market and Mission Waco. … We’ve seen the difference it makes in the communities that have already implemented it.”
The various regions with Add Milk pilots are testing their own redemption models. At this point in the program, it is important to test different models to see which is most effective at encouraging healthy milk consumption, Everett said.
At Jubilee, SNAP customers who buy a qualifying milk product will have a coupon equal to the value of the milk printed on their receipt, good for their next purchase of a SNAP-eligible item.
Mission Waco Executive Director John Calaway said he believes the model was chosen for the Waco location based on the payment system Jubilee already has set up.
“The format of coupon redemption was chosen because we also think it works for our store, it makes sense for our customers, but also the program itself, we hope it’s really beneficial. We believe in the program, that it’s incentives like this that change behavior,” Calaway said. “We think we were chosen because North Waco, just like so many other urban inner cities, just has such a high rate of poverty.”
It is a simple approach to easing the burdens of inflation for SNAP users, he said.
David Daniels stocks milk at the Jubilee Food Market, which is launching a pilot program that fully offsets the cost of milk for customers using SNAP.
The Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty approached Mission Waco about the incentive program last year, and it has evolved over the last few months, Calaway said.
“It really started with Baylor wanting to do something in their own backyard, when it comes to helping SNAP customers,” Calaway said. “We were excited that they kind of thought of us first and reached out.”
Everett said it is a hardship for people in lower income homes to purchase foods that fully meet their nutritional needs. Research shows incentivizing is more effective than limiting what SNAP cards can be used on, Everett said.
“About one in five people that participate in federal nutrition programs don’t believe milk is affordable. Particularly because of supply chain issues now, the war in Ukraine, inflation, it’s making the cost of a gallon of milk skyrocket,” Everett said. “We found out from our partners in Alaska right now that in some parts of Alaska it’s $25 for a gallon of milk. But we know milk is kind of a superfood. It provides a lot of high levels of nutrition to people who need it, and about 90% (of people) need more daily consumption to meet the dairy guidelines that USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) puts out.”
Everett said the new incentive program is not the only one of its kind. The Double up Buck program initiated by the Fair Food Network provides a similar incentive for fruits and vegetables.
“We double the incentives for people who are utilizing the SNAP card and occasionally the WIC card as well, so that they can get double the value for fruit and vegetable purchases,” Everett said. “We just took that same concept and thought ‘What if we just incentive the purchase of milk as well?’”
Calaway said the Add Milk pilot program is scheduled to last into next year, and he hopes it proves successful and can be extended after that.
“We hope that it can go and continue, because we believe in it,” he said. “We think it’s such a really good incentive for folks in Waco.”
Everett said expanding to dominant grocers throughout the United States, such as H-E-B, would be ideal in the future, however it will require the incentive program to undergo changes, to be placed in a higher scale model.
“That’s the dream though,” Everett said. “The hope is that at one point, once the program has proved that it’s effective, that it would be naturally implemented in all the grocery stores.”
