Progress 07/01/18 to 06/30/23
Outputs
Target Audience:SPUR's Double Up Food Bucks program distributed coupons to CalFresh participants at eight grocery stores in Santa Clara and Alameda counties. Lucky 7, Santa Fe Foods (White Road) and three Arteaga's Food Centers are located in San José while another Arteaga's Food Center is located in Gilroy and a second Santa Fe Foods is located in Newark. Our eighth store, the Berkeley Student Food Collective, is in Berkeley. The target audience for the program are people who reside in neighborhoods adjacent to these grocery stores, especially food-insecure individuals and families struggling to afford adequate fresh fruits and vegetables. Double Up Food Bucks incentives are only available for consumers buying fresh food using CalFresh/SNAP benefits. CalFresh is available to households with net incomes below the federal poverty limit, therefore the beneficiaries of this program are low- and very low-income families. During the reporting period, SPUR conducted outreach through a variety of channels described below. Nearly all forms of outreach have engaged CalFresh families in the three languages most common among CalFresh participants in Santa Clara County and Alameda County: English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Please see earlier progress reports for details How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?SPUR shares the program's progress and results with our project advisory committee during monthly meetings. The advisory committee includes representatives from project partner organizations including the Santa Clara County Social Services Agency, the County Public Health Department, Second Harvest Food Bank, and FIRST 5 Santa Clara County. Project updates and highlights of evaluation results from our evaluator, John Snow Inc., have been shared through public presentations and our periodic "Friends of Double Up Food Bucks" newsletter. Annual summary reports are also available on our website at www.spur.org/healthyfood What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Improved food security and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables among CalFresh families in our target neighborhoods Between the period of 2017-2023 (which includes our first FINI grant as well as the period of this second grant), Double Up Food Bucks California (DUFB) provided demonstrable benefits to CalFresh households by providing extra dollars to families facing burdensome financial challenges. In this time, at least 17,319 households participated in Double Up Food Bucks California by redeeming coupons, supporting between 29,000 and 79,000 individuals. While there may be some household duplication in our data because households using both regular SNAP benefits and Pandemic-EBT are counted twice because they were using two distinct EBT cards, we still feel confident that more than 10,000 households redeemed coupons during the grant period. We conducted customer intercept surveys in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 (having been unable to conduct the surveys the other years because of the COVID pandemic). In all years of the survey, more than 95% of CalFresh participants reported that they "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that they and their families were buying and eating more fruits and vegetables because of the program. Similarly, more than 95% agreed or strongly agreed that Double Up Food Bucks helped them stretch their food budget, thereby improving food security. During the 2017-2023 grant periods, CalFresh families earned a combined total of $1,859,366 in Double Up Food Bucks coupons and redeemed a total $1,033,491. This represents a 55% redemption rate, which is quite high for a paper-based coupon program. This cumulative data gives us confidence that the program had its intended impact on customer behavior by making healthy food more affordable for participating households. Goal 2: Increased sales of produce at participating retailers - both California-grown produce and produce generally As we noted in earlier progress reports, it has become clear to us that whole-store data is a poor proxy for tracking the impact of our incentive program on produce sales. For most of our stores, the percent of sales that come from CalFresh customers is a small portion of their overall sales. We have concluded that the correlations between Double Up usage and produce sales are quite loose and far from proving causation. There are many other factors influencing sales of produce at participating stores beyond our program. In 2021, with that in mind and with our project evaluation needing to extend over a longer time horizon than originally planned, we scaled back our evaluation costs by no longer tracking certain data as closely as before. One area that we no longer track closely is produce sales. Unfortunately, the limitations of the data our participating stores collect hinders our ability to do a detailed level of analysis that might show causal links between the program and changes in produce sales. Goal 3: Broader and deeper support for expanding healthy food incentives among policymakers, food system stakeholders, and the general public in Santa Clara County and California. The Double Up Food Bucks program has been enthusiastically embraced by participating shoppers, with the vast majority expressing a strong desire (through survey responses) to see the program expand. Each of our current participating grocery stores have expressed their desire to continue participating in the program in future years and two of the grocery chains are participating in the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project. In 2020, SPUR looked more deeply into EBT integration and saw more consistent engagement from California's Department of Social Services (CDSS). In November 2021, CDSS presented SPUR and other grantees with contracts for which timelines and prospective launch dates had to be updated. EBT Integration Partners include the California Department of Social Services and three new retail locations. From the second half of 2021 to mid 2022, SPUR was in negotiations with several stakeholders in order to finalize contract terms and confirm retail partner participation. Contract negotiations were finalized in May 2022, which allowed SPUR to proceed with establishing contract partnerships with our retail partner network. Due to the length of contract negotiations to secure state funding and subsequent establishment of DUFB technology infrastructure within California's EBT system, launch dates which were originally planned for fall 2022 were pushed into early 2023. We are pleased to report that as of August 2023, all participating Santa Fe Foods and Arteaga's Food Center stores are now providing healthy food incentives via a rebate to a customer's EBT card rather than via a paper-based coupon. This project is fully funded by state budget dollars and not by federal FINI funds. We believe this is a very significant milestone toward making healthy food incentives a scalable, long-term component of the CalFresh program. Goal 4: Successful replication of bounce-back coupon incentive distribution technology; exploration of new technology for smaller retailers with less-sophisticated POS systems As noted in earlier progress reports: In early 2020, just before the pandemic hit, we had soft launched the program at the Berkeley Student Food collective with a new point-of-sale system manufactured by Clover. The management of the store had found a way to use electronic gift cards to provide customers with the Double Up Food Bucks they had earned. Though not as seamless a system as the others we operate, we were excited to find an option that was workable for a smaller retailer. The store, unfortunately, couldn't sustain enough business when the pandemic hit in early March 2020 and only recently re-opened in August 2021. We also continue to be convinced that the CA Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot project is demonstrating a system that is significantly better than a paper coupon-based program. We are proud that Double Up Food Bucks California helped lay the groundwork for the EBT-integrated incentive program now available to CalFresh customers and that our work with grocery stores in California -- which built upon the work done by Massachusetts in the original Healthy Incentive Pilot in 2012 -- has helped pave a path for other states and retailers to follow.
Publications
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Progress 07/01/21 to 06/30/22
Outputs
Target Audience:SPUR's Double Up Food Bucks program distributed coupons to CalFresh participants at eight grocery stores in Santa Clara and Alameda counties. Lucky 7, Santa Fe Foods (White Road) and three Arteaga's Food Centers are located in San José while another Arteaga's Food Center is located in Gilroy and a second Santa Fe Foods is located in Newark. Our eighth store, the Berkeley Student Food Collective, is in Berkeley. The target audience for the program are people who reside in neighborhoods adjacent to these grocery stores, especially food-insecure individuals and families struggling to afford adequate fresh fruits and vegetables. Double Up Food Bucks incentives are only available for consumers buying fresh food using CalFresh/SNAP benefits. CalFresh is available to households with net incomes below the federal poverty limit, therefore the beneficiaries of this program are low- and very low-income families. During the reporting period, SPUR conducted outreach through a variety of channels described below. Nearly all forms of outreach have engaged CalFresh families in the three languages most common among CalFresh participants in Santa Clara County and Alameda County: English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Outreach in the broader community leveraged partners' existing relationships and programming, such as the integration of Double Up Food Bucks messaging into partners' existing programs and/or activities being implemented in response to the pandemic. For example, FIRST 5 Santa Clara County distributed flyers for Breastfeeding Awareness Week distribution events. The Santa Clara County Social Services Agency distributed flyers to CalFresh households through new or renewal informational packets (roughly 5,000 flyers per month starting in August 2020) that eventually reached all CalFresh households by August 2021. Partners also raised awareness about Double Up Food Bucks through presentations to community organizations. Additionally, the Double Up Food Bucks California website saw 18,080 visits to the website and 16,060 unique visitors in 2021. There was a rise in visits in March of 2021 as well as during the holiday season. Changes/Problems:SPUR has experienced a higher burn rate of DUFB as prices for produce have increased and the amount of SNAP circulating in the community has increased. The effect is a higher-than-anticipated depletion of our resources to keep up with the demand for the program. DUFB saw a record high of $241,905 in redeemed coupons in 2021 with the last quarter of 2021 registering a new quarterly high of around $96,000. The level of redemption can partially be attributed to emergency programs such as Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) as well as temporarily increased CalFresh budgets from COVID-related emergency allotments, which gave more families funds they could use for programs like DUFB. SPUR has continued to identify local philanthropic partners, including FIRST 5 Santa Clara and Kaiser Permanente South Bay, who have committed funding for incentive dollars for 2022-2023. SPUR also faced personnel transitions during the second half of 2021, posing additional challenges on the management of DUFB. Following the departure of SPUR's previous Food and Agriculture Program Manager, we experienced a three month vacancy. During this time the Food and Agriculture Policy Director managed the program on the ground. Following the hiring of a new Program Manager in January, the first quarter of 2022 involved significant time spent onboarding and training the new program manger, who then quickly became responsible for the day-to-day operations of program delivery. The ongoing pandemic continues to pose challenges by affecting promotion for the program. In-person promotion had to be paused due to safety restrictions associated with the pandemic. Participating grocery stores continued to use signage and flyers to indicate produce eligible through the program and these are typically offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. Additionally, several partners, such as Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, conduct digital outreach through social media and other networks. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As part of the Double Up Food Bucks program, SPUR staff provided training to numerous project partners through the Department of Social Services which hosts an annual convening. SPUR staff conducted training for local Spanish-speaking community health outreach workers (also known as "promotoras"); staff at the the School of Arts and Culture in San José; and staff at META who last collaborated with SPUR staff to conduct surveys of the program in 2019. SPUR staff has continued to learn and sharpen skills during this progression, including executing various types of evaluation; public speaking; media interviewing; and community outreach techniques. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?SPUR shares the program's progress and results with our project advisory committee during monthly meetings. The advisory committee includes representatives from project partner organizations including the Santa Clara County Social Services Agency, the County Public Health Department, Second Harvest Food Bank, and FIRST 5 Santa Clara County. Project updates and highlights of evaluation results from our evaluator, John Snow Inc., have been shared through public presentations and our periodic "Friends of Double Up Food Bucks" newsletter. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?SPUR will continue to work with six current stores in Santa Clara County and two stores in Alameda County to continue their participation in 2022-2023. As a CA Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project implementer, we will transition 5-6 of our currently participating stores to a more efficient system for distributing and redeeming incentives. To do this we will work with point-of-sale manufacturers, payment platforms, and third-party processors to update their software to allow for incentives to be distributed via the EBT system rather than paper coupons. The current goal is for all stores in the EBT-integration pilot to "go live" by March 2023. In addition, SPUR will publish and distribute an annual report on evaluation results from SPUR's independent evaluator JSI to demonstrate to lawmakers, partners, and stakeholders the positive impacts of grocery incentives on consumer consumption and CA-grown produce sales. We will also continue collecting data from all participating grocery stores to allow for more accurate cost projections for a statewide expansion of healthy food incentives. All these activities support the objective of securing permanent funding for making healthy food incentive programs available at grocery stores, and farmers markets, statewide.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Improved food security and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables among CalFresh families in our target neighborhoods In 2021, we saw the COVID-19 pandemic extend into its second year coupled with record-levels of inflation and unemployment across the United States. Consumers experienced food prices increase 6.3% in 2021. Double Up Food Bucks California (DUFB) has provided demonstrable benefits to CalFresh households by providing extra dollars to families facing burdensome financial challenges. Since the launch of Double Up Food Bucks California, an estimated 12,790 households have participated by redeeming coupons, supporting between 20,464 and 58,834 individuals. An increase in CalFresh applications that began in 2020 continued into 2021 with a 17% increase in cases. In 2021, over 6,600 households redeemed Double Up Food Bucks coupons, supporting between 10,659 and 30,645 individuals. While there may be some household duplication in our data because households using both regular SNAP benefits and Pandemic-EBT are counted twice because they were using two distinct EBT cards, we still feel confident that more households redeemed coupons in 2021 than any prior year. And, of those redeeming households, up to 4,200 were first-time DUFB coupon redeemers. These patterns reflect that the reach of DUFB in our target neighborhoods is continuing to expand, though slower than anticipated. We have long held a goal of reaching 8,000 unique households served through the program annually. In 2021 we reached over 6,600 unique households, a higher number of unique households than in 2020 even though the number of stores remained the same. We continue to look forward and anticipate that the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project, which now has launch dates between February and March 2023, may eventually reach 8,000 unique households per year. It's also possible that that goal will remain unreachable at the scale we now have planned for the coming years. Because of the ongoing COVID pandemic, we were unable to conduct a customer intercept survey in 2021. However, given the consistency of results from previous years we are confident that CalFresh participants using Double Up generally found the program very helpful. In the 2019 survey, 97-98% of CalFresh participants reported that they "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that they and their families were buying and eating more fruits and vegetables because of the program. Similarly, 99% agreed or strongly agreed that Double Up Food Bucks helped them stretch their food budget, thereby improving food security. The value of coupons redeemed in 2021 increased 18% over the previous year, growing from $203,247 in 2020 to $241,905 in 2021. This increase is slightly higher than the increase in coupons generated. The 2021 redemption rate, based on the value of coupons generated versus redeemed, was 54%, a slight increase from the 2020 rate. An estimated $445,421 in coupons were earned across all stores - up from $390,000 in 2020. Increased earning and redemption rates in 2021 give us confidence that the program is having its intended impact on customer behavior and that our results are similar to the results of other incentive programs elsewhere in the country. Goal 2: Increased sales of produce at participating retailers - both California-grown produce and produce generally As we noted in earlier progress reports, it has become clear to us that whole-store data is a poor proxy for tracking the impact of our incentive program on produce sales. For most of our stores, the percent of sales that come from CalFresh customers is a small portion of their overall sales. We have concluded that the correlations between Double Up usage and produce sales are quite loose and far from proving causation. There are many other factors influencing sales of produce at participating stores beyond our program. In 2021, with that in mind and with our project evaluation needing to extend over a longer time horizon than originally planned, we scaled back our evaluation costs by no longer tracking certain data as closely as before. One area that we no longer track closely is produce sales. Unfortunately, the limitations of the data our participating stores collect hinders our ability to do a detailed level of analysis that might show causal links between the program and changes in produce sales. Goal 3: Broader and deeper support for expanding healthy food incentives among policymakers, food system stakeholders, and the general public in Santa Clara County and California. The Double Up Food Bucks program has been enthusiastically embraced by participating shoppers, with the vast majority expressing a strong desire (through previous surveys) to see the program expand. Each of our current participating grocery stores have expressed their desire to continue participating in the program in future years and two of the grocery chains will be investing even more into the program as they participate in the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project. In 2020, SPUR looked more deeply into EBT integration and saw more consistent engagement from California's Department of Social Services (CDSS). In November 2021, CDSS presented SPUR and other grantees with contracts for which timelines and prospective launch dates had to be updated. EBT Integration Partners include the California Department of Social Services and three new retail locations. From the second half of 2021 to mid 2022, SPUR was in negotiations with several stakeholders in order to finalize contract terms and confirm retail partner participation. Contract negotiations were finalized in May 2022, which allowed SPUR to proceed with establishing contract partnerships with our retail partner network. Due to the length of contract negotiations to secure state funding and subsequent establishment of DUFB technology infrastructure within California's EBT system, launch dates which were originally planned for fall 2022 have been pushed to early next year. This project is fully funded by state budget dollars and not by federal FINI funds. The project has finally moved into implementation and we see this and the expansion into new territories as steady momentum and buy-in. Goal 4: Successful replication of bounce-back coupon incentive distribution technology; exploration of new technology for smaller retailers with less-sophisticated POS systems As noted in earlier progress reports: In early 2020, just before the pandemic hit, we had soft launched the program at the Berkeley Student Food collective with a new point-of-sale system manufactured by Clover. The management of the store had found a way to use electronic gift cards to provide customers with the Double Up Food Bucks they had earned. Though not as seamless a system as the others we operate, we were excited to find an option that was workable for a smaller retailer. The store, unfortunately, couldn't sustain enough business when the pandemic hit in early March 2020 and only recently re-opened in August 2021. While we continue to hone coupon technologies, we also continue to be convinced that the upcoming CA Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot project will be helpful in moving multiple point of sale systems toward a model that can be better replicated across stores.
Publications
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Progress 07/01/20 to 06/30/21
Outputs
Target Audience:SPUR's Double Up Food Bucks program distributed coupons to CalFresh participants at seven grocery stores in Santa Clara and Alameda counties. Lucky 7, Santa Fe Foods (White Road) and three Arteaga's Food Centers are located in San José while another Arteaga's Food Center is located in Gilroy and a second Santa Fe Foods is located in Newark. An eighth store, the Berkeley Student Food Collective agreed to participate in the Double Up Food Bucks program but was forced to close at the onset of the pandemic. The target audience for the program are people who reside in neighborhoods adjacent to these grocery stores, especially food-insecure individuals and families struggling to afford adequate fresh fruits and vegetables. Double Up Food Bucks incentives are only available for consumers buying fresh food using CalFresh/SNAP benefits. CalFresh is available to households with net incomes below the federal poverty limit, therefore the beneficiaries of this program are low- and very low-income families. During the reporting period, SPUR conducted outreach through a variety of channels described below. Nearly all forms of outreach have engaged CalFresh families in the three languages most common among CalFresh participants in Santa Clara County and Alameda County: English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Outreach in the broader community leveraged partners' existing relationships and programming, such as the integration of Double Up Food Bucks messaging into partners' existing programs and/or activities being implemented in response to the pandemic. For example, FIRST 5 Santa Clara County distributed flyers during diaper distribution events. The Santa Clara County Social Services Agency distributed flyers to CalFresh households through new or renewal informational packets (roughly 5,000 flyers per month starting in August 2020) that eventually reached all CalFresh households by August 2021. Second Harvest of Silicon Valley displayed posters at pick-up locations and participated in a Facebook Live event with a SPUR representative; the event received over 300 views within 24 hours. Partners also raised awareness about Double Up Food Bucks through Google Ads and presentations to community organizations. Additionally, the Double Up Food Bucks California website saw 28,000 unique visitors in 2020, a 62% increase from 2019, which we believe reflects the large jump in food insecurity caused by the pandemic. Changes/Problems:The greatest challenges SPUR encountered with the Double Up Food Bucks program were those presented by the pandemic. Promoting Double Up Food Bucks is critical to the success of the program yet in-person promotion had to be paused due to safety restrictions associated with the pandemic. Participating grocery stores continued to use signage and flyers to indicate produce eligible through the program and these are typically offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. Additionally, several partners, such as Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, shifted efforts to digital outreach through social media and other networks. The pandemic further challenged food systems, such as food banks, pantries and grocery stores given the rapid increase in demand and stretched these systems to serve both existing clients and newly food insecure families seeking services due to the pandemic. Santa Clara County saw an increase in rates of food insecurity from 15.7% to 19.1% between just April and July of 2020. There was a 20% increase in Santa Clara County's CalFresh caseload in the quarter between April-June 2020 compared to the prior quarter and nearly a 40% increase from the same time in the previous year. We heard anecdotally from our grocery partners that they struggled during COVID-19 to meet sudden increases in consumer demand, while simultaneously experiencing unprecedented disruptions to their staffing and distribution systems. Lastly, SPUR's Food and Agriculture Program Manager, Diego Ortiz, who managed the on-the-ground operations of the Double Up Food Bucks program left the organization in September 2021. SPUR is currently in the process of hiring a replacement for that position and Eli Zigas, the Project Director is ensuring the work continues while we on-board a new staff member. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As part of the Double Up Food Bucks program, SPUR staff provided training to numerous project partners, including cashiers at each participating grocery store; CalFresh benefits staff at Social Service Agency offices across the County; and local Spanish-speaking community health outreach workers (also known as "promotoras") affiliated with the Food Bank. Two SPUR staff members have learned and sharpened skills during the pilot, including executing various types of evaluation; public speaking; media interviewing; and community outreach techniques. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?SPUR shares the program's progress and results with our project advisory committee during monthly meetings. The advisory committee includes representatives from project partner organizations including the Santa Clara County Social Services Agency, the County Public Health Department, Second Harvest Food Bank, and FIRST 5 Santa Clara County. Project updates and highlights of evaluation results from our evaluator, John Snow Inc., have been shared through public presentations and our periodic "Friends of Double Up Food Bucks" newsletter. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Moving forward, SPUR will ramp up efforts to improve food security and increase consumption of fruits and vegetables among CalFresh families in target neighborhoods. We will strive to expand the number of households we reach from pre-pandemic levels by 30%, increasing to at least 11,300 unique households receiving coupons and 2,925 households redeeming coupons (in both 2021 and 2022). In 2021 and 2022, we anticipate reaching a combined total of at least $250,000 in Double Up Food Bucks coupons redeemed. This plan includes the participation of one additional store in the northern part of Alameda County, where there is currently no grocery store participating in Double Up Food Bucks. This store--the Berkeley Student Food Collective-- just recently soft-launched the program for a second time, having had to close in 2020 due to the pandemic after launching the first time . Looking further ahead, we were recently selected as one of three pilot grantees to participate in the CA Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot project. Our plan includes bringing on one new Santa Fe Food store in Salinas, CA and two new Harvest Market stores near Mendocino, CA, in addition to offering incentives via the EBT card at three participating Arteaga's stores. The EBT-integrated technology is instrumental to scaling healthy food incentives. As of September 2021, we are still awaiting a final timeline from the California Department of Social Services, but hope to offer CalFesh customers incentives via the EBT card by the end of 2022.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Improved food security and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables among CalFresh families in our target neighborhoods Since the launch of Double Up Food Bucks California, an estimated 8,500 households have participated by redeeming coupons, supporting between 14,500 and 39,400 individuals. In 2020 alone, at least 5,327 unique households redeemed Double Up Food Bucks coupons. Using demographic information collected via our customer intercept survey, the number of individuals benefitting from the program is estimated to be 19,294 , including roughly 13,323 under the age of 18. Because it has taken longer than expected to expand the number of participating stores, we are not on track to reach our goal of 8,000 unique households per year. Seven grocery stores in Santa Clara County and Alameda County participated in the DUFB program in 2020 with another store--the Berkeley Student Food Collective--electing to participate in February 2020 but unfortunately having to close in March 2020 due to the pandemic. We are hopeful that this store will reopen soon. Through our participation in the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project, which will hopefully launch by late 2022, we may eventually reach 8,000 unique household per year. But, it's also possible that that goal will remain unreachable at the scale we now have planned for the coming years. In 2020, the value and number of Double Up Food Bucks coupons distributed increased significantly from prior years. Approximately $390,000 coupons were generated in 2020, more than double the annual average of the three previous years, when roughly $161,000 in coupons were distributed. This can primarily be attributed to a massive increase in need brought about by the pandemic. Similarly, the value of redeemed coupons was almost 2.5 times higher in 2020 ($203,248) compared to the average between 2017 and 2019 ($92,237) and last year's total of $95,627. The redemption rate for distributed coupons in 2020 remained between 50-60%, consistent with previous years and qualitative evaluations of other FINI-funded sites which found that redemption of incentives plateaued over time. Because of the COVID pandemic, we were unable to conduct a customer intercept survey in 2020. However, given the consistency of results from previous years we are confident that CalFresh participants using Double Up generally found the program very helpful. In the 2019 survey, 97-98% of CalFresh participants reported that they "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that they and their families were buying and eating more fruits and vegetables because of the program. Similarly, 99% agreed or strongly agreed that Double Up Food Bucks helped them stretch their food budget, thereby improving food security. These survey responses give us confidence that the program is having its intended impact on customer behavior and that our results are similar to the results of previous incentive programs elsewhere in the country. Goal 2: Increased sales of produce at participating retailers - both California-grown produce and produce generally With the exception of one participating store (for which comparison data is not yet available), all stores saw a large increase in both the total value of electronic benefits transfer (EBT) produce sales and in the percentage of all produce sales that were generated by EBT and Double Up Food Bucks customers. Compared to 2019, the annual percentage of total produce sales generated by EBT and Double Up Food Bucks customers increased in all of the stores for which data are available. When EBT customers purchase California-grown produce, the receive a Double Up Food Bucks coupon that can be redeemed for either California or non-California-grown produce. Several participating stores saw a rate of around 50% of total EBT sales being for California-grown produce, roughly twice the rate seen at some of the other participating stores. Since Double Up Food Bucks launched, an estimated 15% of EBT produce sales across stores were purchased using Double Up Food Bucks coupons. In 2020, this rate at one of the participating stores was approximately 29% while other stores ranged between 7-18%. As we continue to collect more data, it is becoming clear that whole-store data is a poor proxy for tracking the impact of our incentive program on produce sales. For most of our stores, the percent of sales that come from CalFresh customers is a small portion of their overall sales. So while we will continue to track the correlations between Double Up usage and produce sales, we have concluded that these correlations are quite loose and far from proving causation. There are many other factors influencing sales of produce at participating stores beyond our program. We will try to look more granularly at produce purchasing trends of CalFresh customers specifically, but, unfortunately, the limitations of the data our participating stores collect may hinder our ability to do that more detailed level of analysis. Goal 3: Broader and deeper support for expanding healthy food incentives among policymakers, food system stakeholders, and the general public in Santa Clara County and California. The Double Up Food Bucks program has been enthusiastically embraced by participating shoppers, with the vast majority expressing a strong desire (through previous surveys) to see the program expand. Each of our current participating grocery stores have expressed their desire to continue participating in the program in future years and two of the grocery chains will be investing even more into the program as they participate in the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project. During 2020, SPUR partnered with Fair Food Network, researchers from Colorado State University, and ten other organizations running incentive programs across the country on a study which estimates the potential economic impact of statewide adoption of healthy food incentive programs. In February 2021, we published that research, which found that for every $1 invested in a healthy food incentive program in California, we can expect to see up to $3 in economic activity generated statewide as a result. Also in February, we hosted a webinar that attracted 300 viewers from across the country (and 500 additional registrants who received a copy of the report) - which provided a strong indicator that there continues to be growing interest in expanding healthy food incentive programs. SPUR has shared the California policy brief with state legislators and will continue to do so in the coming years. Goal 4: Successful replication of bounce-back coupon incentive distribution technology; exploration of new technology for smaller retailers with less-sophisticated POS systems In early 2020, just before the pandemic hit, we had soft launched the program at the Berkeley Student Food collective with a new point-of-sale system manufactured by Clover. The management of the store had found a way to use electronic gift cards to provide customers with the Double Up Food Bucks they had earned. Though not as seamless a system as the others we operate, we were excited to find an option that was workable for a smaller retailer. The store, unfortunately, couldn't sustain enough business when the pandemic hit in early March 2020 and only recently re-opened in August 2021. We look forward to gaining more experience with this new point-of-sale system in the coming months. While we continue to hone coupon technologies, we also continue to be convinced that the upcoming CA Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot project will be helpful in moving multiple point of sale systems toward a model that can be better replicated across stores.
Publications
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Progress 07/01/19 to 06/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:SPUR's Double Up Food Bucks California project distributed incentives to CalFresh participants at seven grocery stores in Santa Clara and Alameda Counties. Four of the stores are in San Jose, CA: two Arteaga's Food Centers, a Lucky 7 (formerly known as Food Bowl 99), and a Santa Fe Market. The fifth store is another Arteaga's Food Center located in Gilroy, a small city 30 miles south of San Jose. The sixth store is a Santa Fe Foods in Newark, a city in Alameda County. The final store was the Berkeley Student Food Collective which is currently closed due to COVID-19 but we are hopeful that once the store is open again they will continue to offer DUFB. The people most likely to shop at these stores are residents from the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the stores, and those areas are where SPUR has targeted project outreach. Double Up Food Bucks incentives are only available for consumers buying fresh food using CalFresh/SNAP benefits. CalFresh is available to households with net incomes below the federal poverty limit, therefore the beneficiaries of this program are low- and very low-income families. During the reporting period, SPUR conducted outreach through a variety of channels described below including a description of the channel and the estimated number of unique households reached. Nearly all forms of outreach have engaged CalFresh families in the three languages most common among CalFresh participants in Santa Clara County and Alameda County: English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Flyers distributed: More than 12,000 tri-lingual flyers In store greeters: Four promatoras from META promoted DUFB at 3 participating grocery stores Family Resource Centers: Staff from FIRST 5 provide information about the program to their clients Double Up Food Bucks California website: Unique visitors to our program website between July 2019 and June 2020 - 25,400 Changes/Problems:In our work to expand DUFB to different size retailers we have encountered challenges leading to delays in expanding the number of participating stores. This is primarily because each new store requires upgrades to their specific point of sale (POS) which is often a cumbersome and costly process. For example, SPUR began conversations with a large grocery chain about bringing on two of their stores in San Jose in June 2018. This particular grocery chain is much larger than our current participating stores and would have greatly increased our reach. However, after nearly a year of conversations the chain ultimately decided the POS upgrades were too costly since the program is not guaranteed to run over the long term. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a small corner store scale grocery was also unable to upgrade their point of sale system. The potential partner does not currently have the capacity to provide the level of detail in reporting that is necessary to implement DUFB. We are in conversation with management at both of these grocers and continue to explore creative solutions to overcome this technology barrier. In addition to expansion challenges, we are preparing for difficulties related to COVID-19. Given the surge in CalFresh usage because of the coronavirus and the massive layoffs it has caused, it is possible that we could see a jump of 50-100% in DUFB redemption in the coming year. That would translate into potentially 3,000 - 4,000 households (representing 7,000 - 13,000 individuals) redeeming DUFB coupons. As early as April and May, we started to see the number of CalFresh dollars being spent at our participating grocers start to rise. At the four stores where we have comprehensive data, by June each saw CalFresh redemptions triple (or more) compared to the average in the first quarter of 2020 (January-March). The highest increase at any store was 323%, which is more than a four-fold increase. Alongside that, we've also seen a very significant increase ofDoubleUpFood Bucks (DUFB) redemptions at participating stores, ranging from a 60% to a 200% increase in June compared to the first quarter average. While we are glad that our program has been able to meet the dramatically increased demand forDoubleUpFood Bucks at these stores, we, unfortunately, do not expect the need for CalFresh andDoubleUpto decrease anytime soon. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As part of the Double Up Food Bucks program, SPUR staff provided training to numerous project partners, including cashiers at each participating grocery store; CalFresh benefits staff at Social Service Agency offices across the County; and local Spanish-speaking community health outreach workers (also known as "promotoras") affiliated with the Food Bank. Two SPUR staff members have learned and sharpened skills during the pilot, including executing various types of evaluation; public speaking; media interviewing; and community outreach techniques. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?SPUR shares the program's progress and results with our project advisory committee during monthly meetings. The advisory committee includes representatives from project partner organizations including the Santa Clara County Social Services Agency, the County Public Health Department, Second Harvest Food Bank, and FIRST 5 Santa Clara County. Project updates and highlights of evaluation results from our evaluator, John Snow Inc., have been shared through public presentations and our periodic "Friends of Double Up Food Bucks" newsletter. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Looking ahead, SPUR will continue working with all seven of our participating grocers to promote the program within the stores; and continue community outreach with our partner organizations, particularly outreach that is focused on community groups working with low-income individuals and families near participating stores. Our independent evaluator will produce and we will publish a report on the results of the pilot from 2020. SPUR will disseminate results to project partners, supporters, Fair Food Network, the USDA, and interested policymakers. In terms of expansion, SPUR is focused on the CA Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot project which will fund a pilot program to test incentive integration in the state's EBT system. This technology is instrumental to scaling healthy food incentives in the future and we plan to apply to be one of three test sites. If we are chosen it would allow us to expand to an additional 2-4 stores and the cost of incentives would be covered by the state.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Improved food security and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables among CalFresh families in our target neighborhoods In 2019 at least 2,250 unique CalFresh households redeemed more than $95,000 in Double Up Food Bucks coupons at five participating stores. Using county averages and the demographic information collected through our customer intercept survey, that translates to the program having reached between 5,172 and 10,345 individuals. During our first three years of running the program (February 2017 to December 2019), a combined total of more than 4,500 CalFresh households redeemed Double Up Food Bucks coupons. Using both county averages and the demographic information we collected through our customer intercept survey, that translates to the program having reached 9,500 - 15,000 people, including an estimated 10,800 children ages 0-18 years old, over its lifetime. Because it has taken longer than expected to expand the number of participating stores, we are not yet on track to reach our goal of 8,000 unique households per year. However as of May 2020, DUFB has successfully expanded to seven grocery stores in Santa Clara County and Alameda County. In the past year we talked with grocers in San Francisco about offering Double Up Food Bucks. While some of those conversations are still ongoing, we were unsuccessful in launching. We are optimistic that we will eventually find willing grocers in San Francisco. During the third year of Double Up Food Bucks, 97-98% of CalFresh participants reported that they "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that they and their families were buying and eating more fruits and vegetables because of the program. Similarly, 99% agreed or strongly agreed that Double Up Food Bucks helped them stretch their food budget, thereby improving food security. These survey responses give us confidence that the program is having its intended impact on customer behavior and that our results are similar to the results of previous incentive programs elsewhere in the country. Goal 2: Increased sales of produce at participating retailers - both California-grown produce and produce generally The trends in produce sales across our participating stores are mixed. Between 2018 and 2019, two stores saw increases in their overall produce sales of 10%, one store saw a decline of 7% and one store saw effectively no change (and one store provided incomplete data). Looking specifically at California-grown produce, we only had sufficient data to analyze three stores and within that group, one increased its sales of California-grown produce significantly (47%), while two saw a decline in sales of California-grown produce by 18 - 24%. As we continue to collect more data, it is becoming clear that whole-store data is a poor proxy for tracking the impact of our incentive program on produce sales. For most of our stores, the percent of sales that come from CalFresh customers is a small portion of their overall sales. So while we will continue to track the correlations between Double Up usage and produce sales, we have concluded that these correlations are quite loose and far from proving causation. There are many other factors influencing sales of produce at participating stores beyond our program. We will try to look more granularly at produce purchasing trends of CalFresh customers specifically, but, unfortunately, the limitations of the data our participating stores collect may hinder our ability to do that more detailed level of analysis. Goal 3: Broader and deeper support for expanding healthy food incentives among policymakers, food system stakeholders, and the general public in Santa Clara County and California. The Double Up Food Bucks pilot was enthusiastically embraced by the shoppers who participated in the program. Through our customer intercept surveys, we found that 99% of CalFresh respondents who had used Double Up Food Bucks strongly desired to see the program expanded. This overwhelming response has encouraged us as we seek to expand and we aim to maintain that level of satisfaction with the program. From a grocer perspective, all our current grocers are interested in continuing it into the future. We also received interest from grocers outside our current geography, including in Mendocino, Davis, and Salinas, California. We have also made significant headway with policymakers. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved $30,000 in the FY 19-20 and $15,000 in the FY 20-21 budget to support an expansion of Double Up Food Bucks. At the state level, in early 2018, at the urging of SPUR and our partner California Food Policy Advocates, state Senator Scott Wiener introduced legislation, the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project, which would fund a pilot program to test incentive integration in the state's EBT system. The bill had bipartisan support in the state Assembly and Senate and, in June, the Governor signed a budget including $9 million and the full legislative language for the pilot to move forward. Since the start of 2019, SPUR has been meeting with the staff implementing the Pilot Project, providing best practices based on experience in Massachusetts, and offering technical assistance to the agency to ensure California's program is able to leverage previous efforts in the most cost-effective way. In September 2020, The California Department of Social Services released the formal request for application (RFA) for the EBT integration pilot. We plan to apply with a number of our grocery partners to serve as a pilot sites and look forward to using the lessons learned from the pilot to scale healthy food incentive programs statewide. To understand the benefits of scaling incentives statewide, SPUR has partnered with Fair Food Network (FFN) and ten other incentive program operators to launch a large research project estimating the projected impacts of expanding healthy food incentive programs at grocery stores and farmers' markets across various geographies (ten states, including California, and nationwide). This research and it is set to be complete by January 2021. In addition, SPUR's Food & Agriculture Senior Policy Associate is researching the best potential state-level revenue sources that would provide long-term stable funding for statewide expansion. In addition, SPUR staff have engaged in national conversations regarding the future of healthy food incentive programs, including presenting at both the NextGen EBT conference in November 2019 and the National Grocers Association conference in San Diego in early 2020 Goal 4: Successful replication of bounce-back coupon incentive distribution technology; exploration of new technology for smaller retailers with less-sophisticated POS systems In 2019, we found that all the stores using the NCR ISS-45 point of sale system continued to have success using the bounce back coupon technology that we developed. We have already added more stores in 2020 using that technology. We had many months of conversation with a large grocery company in California about creating the bounce-back coupon technology on a different NCR system (ACS corporate edition). After previously indicating that they could make the necessary changes in-house, they determined that the bounce-back functionality that we wanted could only be developed by paying NCR over $100,000 to make the change. This was disappointing, and unexpected, given what the store IT department had told us earlier. Similarly, we have not yet found a point of sale company that sells to small retailers who can replicate the bounce back technology without incurring very high costs. Both experiences have made us even more convinced that the upcoming CA Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot project will be helpful in moving multiple point of sale systems toward a model that can be better replicated across stores.
Publications
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Progress 07/01/18 to 06/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We did not expend any funds from this grant during the reporting period so have nothing to report.
Publications
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