SNAP recipients will now have a new vehicle to get their food benefits: Uber.
SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is a federal program that offers low-income Americans financial help in buying food. The aid comes through EBT cards, but this payment option has historically been limited to just grocery stores.
That all changes today, though, as Uber Eats announced it’s partnered with Forage and that EBT card recipients will now be able to use their benefits directly on the app for food delivery.
Forage’s co-founder and CEO, Ofek Lavian, said the partnership recognizes the role digital delivery platforms can play in breaking down barriers to finding fresh groceries, especially for people in food deserts. The elderly and people with disabilities also routinely find themselves without a way to get to a grocery store, and apps like Uber can be essential.
“Digital delivery platforms, such as Uber Eats, have become essential lifelines for many living in low-income, low-access communities,” Lavian told Newsweek.
Specifically for the 42 million Americans receiving SNAP, one in five recipients is on disability, and one in eight is elderly.
Lavian said 90 percent of the U.S. population currently residing in these areas can order from at least one delivery platform, and since 2021, Uber Eats has been delivering hundreds of millions of meals to low-income Americans.
“For many, such obstacles make it prohibitively difficult to shop in-store,” Lavian said.
The new Uber Eats EBT payment option will go live in late 2024, the two companies announced today.
“At Uber, we believe healthy foods should be accessible to all,” said Karl Hebert, vice president of Payments, Risk, and Identity at Uber, in a statement. “We are excited to partner with Forage to provide our customers the same seamless payments experience they’ve become accustomed to on Uber when using their SNAP benefits.”
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SNAP Benefits Unused
While Uber Eats’ new payment option is sure to bring excitement from the millions of Americans who rely on the benefits for their weekly grocery shopping, not all Americans who qualify for the program are getting the help.
In California, a recent report discovered that 2.7 million people eligible for CalFresh (California’s SNAP benefits) do not receive any benefits. If the state approved the benefits for the 2.7 million, it would receive an extra $3.5 billion in CalFresh money from the federal government yearly.
“While California has gotten better at enrolling more people into CalFresh in the past decade, we still have a long way to go,” Eli Zigas, food and agriculture policy director at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), previously told Newsweek.
“As the report highlights, other states do a better job of enrolling people who are eligible for this federally funded food assistance. We can, and must, do better so Californians can get critical food assistance and the recommendations in Nourish California’s report point the way forward.”
Nourish California said an “overly complicated and burdensome application process” likely contributed to the low numbers of SNAP beneficiaries.
“We urge the state to immediately prioritize improving CalFresh participation to help the millions of families who need help putting food on the table,” Jared Call, director of policy at Nourish California, said in a statement.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.