Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience is SNAP participants and families, including individuals of all ages, in Washington, DC's low-income, low-access (LILA) neighborhoods where our Healthy Corners stores are located. Primary sub-populations within this focus include older adults with limited access to full-service grocery stores due to the lack of such retailers in DC's low-income, predominantly Black communities and families with children who also rely on school nutrition programs. Changes/Problems:As noted in our year one report, due to Covid-19 and necessary precautions for safe implementation in the first year of the grant, the SNAP Match program timeline was partially delayed as store owners navigated disruptions in their staffing and business models. While the SNAP Match expansion did not start in earnest until year two, we maintained continuous operations throughout the pandemic and were ultimately able to expand to 33 stores, very nearly reaching our target of 34-38 participating retailers despite the upheaval of COVID-19. Further obstacles to store expansion included store difficulties with changing rent situations following the pandemic, some issues navigating qualifications to accept SNAP sales, and delays tied to changing ownership (requiring a new application for SNAP participation). While stores are responsible for obtaining and maintaining their SNAP, DC Central Kitchen mitigated these challenges by providing 1:1 technical assistance to stores as needed, and by developing the Store Owner Community of Practice. We did spend time during the grant term exploring further technological innovations within the project, including moving from paper SNAP Match coupons to electronic ones. However, after researching the relevant solutions, we determined that there were no existing, ready-made viable solutions that integrated with the varied equipment and resources at our partner stores, and that building one from scratch was not feasible, as discussed in our year two report. We discussed this challenge with our USDA advisors at the time, and successfully deployed other planned technological innovations including the electronic ordering system for stores and the informational content on the Healthy Corners consumer app. The Community of Practice is a convening space for SNAP Match store owners to learn from each other on topics of interest to the entire SNAP Match retailer community, such as produce inventory management best practices, small business grant applications, and SNAP Match implementation. The Community of Practice has also helped build interest in the program among non-SNAP Match retailers within our larger Healthy Corners network, who are also invited to attend. Several of the newest SNAP Match stores joined after hearing from their peers about their experiences as SNAP Match retailers, and the peer-to-peer sharing has supplemented DC Central Kitchen's own technical assistance. It has also helped strengthen our credibility as a partner to these retailers, which is important to maintain as the SNAP Match program will continue under a separate, large-scale GusNIP project in 2023-2027. Lastly, with DC's transition to eWIC benefits and with the change in local regulations making it possible for corner stores to participate in WIC beginning in 2021, we provided technical assistance and support for stores becoming WIC partners. At the end of the project 11 SNAP Match stores also accepted WIC, an increase from 9 at the end of year two, and a marked improvement for customers who participate in both WIC and SNAP, who can shop for fresh and frozen produce closer to home. While these efforts took place outside of the time and resources allocated to our GusNIP grant, our evaluations show that store performance as a healthy food retailer is positively correlated with increased alignment with multiple USDA nutrition programs. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Healthy Corners has partnered with the University of the District of Columbia's SNAP-Ed program to create and deliver evidence-based nutrition trainings for SNAP Match store owners and managers, which reached 15 stores in year 2. In year 3, 10 stores completed a four-session training on nutrition, hosted by UDC SNAP-Ed. During the grant term, we conducted more than 100 technical trainings on program-related material such as SNAP Match onboarding and program training, WIC onboarding and follow up, operational and technical support, sales and waste data trends, and goal setting. Since in-person and on-site trainings were limited in year one of the grant due to COVID, this represents an average of at least one per week in years 2 and 3 of the grant, when we were able to hold in-person gatherings and visit stores regularly. These trainings are primarily provided by the two Healthy Corners Program Specialists, one of whom is a graduate of the SNAP Employment & Training-funded Culinary Job Training program at DC Central Kitchen. In addition to one-on-one technical assistance, Healthy Corners established the Store Owner Community of Practice, a quarterly working group of SNAP Match store owners to discuss common topics of interest. Twenty store owners participated in this group, which launched and met four times in the third and final year of the grant. The project also opened up additional training opportunities for Healthy Corners staff via the Nutrition Incentive Hub. Staff attended and presented at Nutrition Incentive Hub convenings, and DC Central Kitchen was accepted into a local sourcing cohort in 2023, which provided staff with both training and networking resources that focused on learning best practice and developing practical solutions to local sourcing challenges. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our team has direct and ongoing contact with our community of interest through various avenues. We participate in the DC Food Policy Council's Food Equity and Access working group to share program updates and relevant results with community members. The program was most recently highlighted by the DC Food Policy Council in a report to the Council of the District of Columbia assessing the food system in 2022 and calling out Healthy Corners as a key source of food in low-income, low-access neighborhoods in DC. We work closely with government agencies like the DC Department of Health and DC WIC State Agency. Through working groups sponsored by the Food Trust, the Nutrition Incentive Hub, the International Fresh Produce Association, and the National Grocers Association, we share and learn best practices for corner stores and incentive programs. DC Central Kitchen moved into a new facility in April 2023, the Michael R. Klein Center for Jobs and Justice, and began hosting policy decisionmakers from our community of interest for tours, convenings, and individual meetings to see our Healthy Corners wholesale operation in practice. Since opening through the end of the grant term, we have hosted leadership from the DC Food Policy Council, the DC Department of Human Services, and DC Health, as well as representatives from the DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commission system, who advise the District government on issues that impact corner store retailers such as zoning, economic development, and food and beverage licenses. An estimated 100 visitors from peer nonprofits, academic researchers, policymakers, and practitioners visited the Klein Center for these types of visits in the grant term. Most notably, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was able to see the impact of this project in December 2023 when he visited the Klein Center for a tour and roundtable discussion with DC Central Kitchen staff, Healthy Corners SNAP Match store owner Amanda Stephenson, and local farmers and food hub operators from Maryland, DC, and West Virginia to discuss the importance of investing in the local food economy. Our Store Navigators (originally called Community Champions and/or Store Champions) model has employed two part-time passionate Healthy Corners shoppers throughout the grant term. They serve as community liaisons with participating retailers and customers. We empower them to share updates directly with friends, neighborhoods, the stores in each of their portfolios, and other members of the community. We also organize and host weekly community engagement opportunities at Healthy Corner store locations throughout the city as well as in community gathering spaces. These store events, which are attended by Store Navigators, feature recipe cards from UDC SNAP-Ed and sometimes cooking demonstrations with DCCK chefs, all of which use produce on sale at the store. Through our Healthy Corners Shopper App, we send text messages directly to community members, updating them on products, pricing, store participation news, and we highlight the nutritional benefits of featured fruits and vegetables. DC Central Kitchen provides a monthly newsletter to partner retailers. Each August and September, we ran annual marketing campaigns on bus shelters and through iHeartMedia channels to reach customers online in targeted geographies. The program has also advertised in local online and print publications, including the Washington Informer, Congress Heights on the Rise, and received press coverage by the Washington Informer, WUSA9, and Civil Eats. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Over the course of the grant, DC Central Kitchen implemented our planned "SNAP Match" incentive structure and more than doubled the number of corner stores participating in the incentive program. Healthy Corners SNAP Match expanded to 33 stores by the end of the grant term. While the bulk of this growth took place in year two, the program also grew by four stores in the final year, as program staff continuously identified and onboarded new stores. The produce-for-produce model introduced in year 1 continued throughout the project. DC Central Kitchen built program engagement and visibility through paid informational, non-persuasive advertising in key markets, continued recruitment for the Healthy Corners app, and close coordination with DC Health and DC's SNAP-Ed agency at the University of District of Columbia to educate SNAP customers about the program. The total value of SNAP Match coupons redeemed increased throughout the course of the grant, from $166,742 in year 1 of the project to $243,435 in year 3, with a coupon redemption rate holding steady at 92.5% across all three years of the grant. Customer shopping habits showed an increase in the value of EBT dollars spent on fruits and vegetables to qualify for the SNAP Match coupon, from $1.30 in the first year to $1.65 at the end of the grant term. The program served 15,000 unique SNAP customers annually and a total of 25,900 unique SNAP customers over the life of the grant, indicating that customers were repeatedly using the program, which is in keeping with findings from our evaluation partner at American University's School of Behavioral Health. American University evaluators surveyed customers at store locations for each year of the grant and found that the SNAP Match model did increase produce consumption; of the customers who used SNAP Match coupons, 60% or more of respondents in each survey year indicated that they ate more fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables as a result of the program. We achieved these results despite the complications and difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even during the citywide shutdown, we maintained our aggregation and distribution efforts, introducing no-touch deliveries for store owners and maintaining safe practices for our staff involved in the program. We also worked closely with the city's emergency response network to inform customers about program information, including changes to our network of stores and their introduction of WIC benefits, which began in 2021. Produce offerings expanded as planned, with frozen items becoming available in year 1, and locally-sourced items expanded throughout the grant. By the end of the grant term, 35% of all product types offered by Healthy Corners to retailers were locally sourced, up from 24% in 2021. After implementing major technological upgrades to our ordering and inventory management systems as outlined in our year 1 report, we focused further technological investments on the Healthy Corners app. In Summer 2022, the app went through a major re-design, which included an addition of details about store hours, inventory listings, and participation in SNAP and WIC. The app now includes an expanded library of recipes from DC's SNAP-Ed grantee, a program based out of DC's land grant university. Over the course of the grant, the app was downloaded 1093 times (613 since the updated app launched in summer 2022 alone). The updated app also received coverage in the Black-owned local news publication The Washington Informer, which has print circulation and readership aligned with the Healthy Corners store footprint.
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Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience is SNAP participants and families in Washington, DC's food insecure neighborhoods where our Healthy Corners stores are located. Sub-populations within our focus include older adults with limited access to full-service grocery stores due to the lack of such retailers in DC's low-income, predominantly Black communities, as well as families with children who rely on school nutrition programs. Changes/Problems:Regarding Goal 4 (Leverage innovative technology solutions that allow for expansion to more participating retailers, greater insight into consumer behavior, and efficient benefit redemption processes), we have determined that current technology options are not fit for GusNIP incentive programs. We spoke with our USDA representative to explain these changes within our grant and were approved in March 2022. As we engaged with potential technology providers, proposed costs ballooned far beyond what had been originally indicated during our proposal development phase and what any one GusNIP grantee could support. In addition, our focus on corner stores (low resource businesses with small margins) means that lengthy beta testing is not only costly in terms of finances, but also in our social capital and trust with these small retailers. Store owners indicated hesitancy in adopting POS changes that they did not initially raise in the proposal development phase, partially because the transition felt 'more real' once the grant was approved and partially because the ongoing challenges of the pandemic had made them even more risk averse. Additionally, we leaned into an innovative technology partnership with the Nutrition Incentive Hub to test, collect stakeholder feedback, and refine our Healthy Corners Shopper app that has helped shoppers plan their shopping trips, connect to community resources, and maintain strong connections with our incentive program during the pandemic. In addition to the partner organization resources we have added other resources to connect the many enterprises within DC Central Kitchen--such as recipes that are used through our School Foods program--to provide an added layer of familiarity. This innovative solution also includes updating data on the deliveries our stores are receiving twice a day, improving accuracy around product information, and emphasizing our benefit programs--SNAP Match incentive program and DC WIC--through user-friendly maps to ease the burden of locating food access programs. These updates have been developed and were implemented in August 2022. In July 2022, the DC WIC State Agency transitioned from paper benefits to electronic benefits (eWIC). This is a major step forward that will make it easier for families to redeem WIC benefits and make multiple, smaller purchases--an ideal shift for small corner retailers. While many of our stores have computerized point-of-sale systems, that is not true of every store, and none yet have eWIC-specific software. With the right combination of hardware and software, we can ensure that WIC pricing is always accurate and seamlessly updated, that customer wait-times are minimized, and that it is easier for store owners to remain compliant with WIC program requirements. Without these upgrades, store owners must enter WIC transactions separately and manually - a limitation that can overwhelm single registers, increase the risk of entering purchase prices inaccurately, and undermine customer privacy and dignity. We have been working with our WIC authorized stores to convert them over to systems that support eWIC purchases. The progress we have made so far in moving stores toward these integrated systems has been successful in large part because of the social capital, trust, and store capacity that we have built with our stores through our SNAP Match incentive program. In addition, our SNAP Match incentive program has rapidly increased the capacity of participating stores which has allowed them to find success in the implementation of the DC WIC program as well. One barrier many WIC State Agencies have had in authorizing small-scale vendors (i.e., corner stores) has been the difficulty in sourcing fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables. DC Central Kitchen's emphasis on sourcing fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables to corner stores has proved instrumental in the success of the DC WIC program in corner stores. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Healthy Corners has partnered with the University of the District of Columbia's SNAP-Ed program to create and deliver nutrition trainings for 15 SNAP Match store owners and managers. During this reporting period, we conducted over 50 technical trainings on program-related material such as SNAP Match onboarding and program training, WIC onboarding and follow-ups, operational and technical support, sales and waste data trends, and goal setting. These trainings are primarily conducted by the Program Specialist. We use training guides and PowerPoints created by the Healthy Corners team to describe the program and set clear expectations with store owners and managers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our team has direct and ongoing contact with our community of interest through various avenues. We participate in the DC Food Policy Council's Food Equity and Access working group to share program updates and relevant results with community members. We work closely with government agencies like the DC Department of Health and DC WIC State Agency. Our Community Champions (formerly Store Champions) initiative engages, trains, and provides stipends to two passionate Healthy Corners shoppers who now serve as community liaisons with participating retailers and customers. We empower them to share updates directly with friends, neighborhoods, the five stores in each of their portfolios, and other members of the community. Through working groups sponsored by the Food Trust, the Nutrition Incentive Hub, and the National Grocers Association, we share and learn best practices for corner stores and incentive programs. Through our Healthy Corners Shopper App, we send text messages directly to community members, updating them on products, pricing, store participation news, and we highlight the nutritional benefits of featured fruits and vegetables. DC Central Kitchen provides a monthly newsletter to partner retailers. During August and September, we ran our annual marketing campaign and targeted 17 bus shelters and other locations across the city with emphasis on our Healthy Corners Shopper App. We ran ads in the Washington Informer, Congress Heights on the Rise, and iHeartMedia and received press coverage by WUSA9. Healthy Corners was featured by Senator Schumer's office as an example of how East Buffalo might continue to make healthy produce available to the community in the wake of the shooting that closed its only grocery store. Upcoming presentations at the annual International Fresh Produce Association conference will also allow Healthy Corners to share best practices and experiences with experts in produce. We also organize community engagement opportunities on a weekly basis at participating Healthy Corners store locations as well as community gathering spaces. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period we plan to prepare between 5-8 new stores to join the SNAP Match program which will allow us to reach our goal of 34-38 SNAP Match stores. One of our primary focuses will be conducting a quarterly SNAP Match Community of Practice. These meetings will allow store owners to share best practices and work through barriers they're facing directly with other store owners. We will also bring in experts and resources tailored to the store owners' needs and preferences. We will continue to organize 5 events per month at community venues and corner stores where we will educate SNAP customers about our incentive programs, including SNAP Match. In collaboration with the developer group Blue Raster, we will continue to iterate improvements to our Healthy Corners Shopper App that offers a wealth of information about Healthy Corners product offerings and store locations, SNAP Match and WIC information and locators, and nutrition and food engagement resources including recipes. We will also be working closely with Appian developers to launch and improve the Healthy Corners ordering process and create store accounts to allow each store to monitor their orders, view their order history, and navigate product offerings with ease. Over the next year, the Healthy Corners team will continue to partner with UDC SNAP-Ed to further integrate recipes at stores. This will include recipe holders and culturally inclusive recipes that incorporate products sold at our Healthy Corners locations.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In year 2, DC Central Kitchen successfully expanded the number of corner stores participating in our SNAP Match program by 45% with 13 new stores being added to the incentive program for a total of 29 SNAP Match stores. During this reporting period, DC Central Kitchen engaged with over 3,500 unique customers per quarter with an average of over 60% of customers being repeat customers. Since inception, DC Central Kitchen's incentive program has reached over 30,000 unique SNAP customers. We continued to use our new tracking dashboard created by Appian to analyze firm-level metrics. We then developed a SNAP Match assessment that reviews incentive program policies and creates target metrics in partnership with store owners and managers. These assessments, coupled with our annual Healthy Corners and SNAP Match store owner surveys, have given us greater insight into the barriers for our incentive stores. Through over 50 on-site trainings with store owners, managers, and clerks we have been able to provide one-on-one technical support and assistance. These trainings have shown to improve firm-level and customer buy in through an average increase of almost $0.30 of EBT dollars spent on fruits and vegetables from the end of FY21 to the final quarter of FY22 (September 2021: $1.33; July 2022: $1.61). During FY22 we have also continued to work with Blue Raster to update our consumer-facing Healthy Corners Shopper App. These updates--including a landing page, a recipes section, additional incentive filters, and general increased ease of use--were officially released through our app at the beginning of August. Our Healthy Corners Shopper App allows us to connect with more than 500 customers per week through text messages sent to app users. Additionally, since September 2021, DC Central Kitchen has organized 36 events at Healthy Corners stores and community venues to emphasize our incentive programs and resources that can be found on the app.
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Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience is SNAP participants and families, including individuals of all ages, in Washington, DC's food insecure neighborhoods where our Healthy Corners stores are located. Primary sub-populations within this focus include older adults with limited access to full-service grocery stores due to the lack of such retailers in DC's low-income, predominantly Black communities and families with children who also rely on school nutrition programs. Changes/Problems:Due to Covid-19 and necessary precautions for safe implementation, the SNAP Match program timeline was delayed and we are now set to achieve a goal of 30 SNAP Match stores by Summer 2022. One significant positive development that we did not anticipate in our original proposal was the successful implementation of WIC benefits at our participating corner stores for the very first time. Due to local regulations, until April 2021, there was no way for retailers with less than 10,000 square feet and 3 cash registers to accept WIC in the District of Columbia. We worked closely with our retailers and District government to help small business understand the coming change in these regulations and build their capacity to accept WIC. The introduction of WIC at 9 of our SNAP Match stores has further centered healthy fruits and vegetables in their business models, sustained more regular deliveries of fruits and vegetables to their stores, and inspired DC's Health Department to support local outdoor advertising promoting Healthy Corners in high-need communities. In pursuing technological advancements with corner stores through enhancing their point-of-sale systems, we have determined that current technology options are not fit for GusNIP incentive programs. As we engaged with potential technology providers, proposed costs ballooned far beyond what any one GusNIP grantee could support and our focus on corner stores (low resource businesses with small margins) means that lengthy beta testing is not only costly in terms of finances, but also in our social capital and trust with these small retailers. In order to continue making progress toward our larger interest in technological innovation, the Healthy Corners team collaborated with the National Grocers Association and other GusNIP incentive programs nationwide to engage in exploratory conversations with the objective of developing a common set of guidelines for Point of Sale developers to streamline nutrition incentive purchases. In order to mitigate gaps and bottlenecks with the manual data entry process we faced at the outset of the grant and to accommodate the GusNIP expansion within the Healthy Corners program, we added a full-time data-entry staff member - creating a living wage job in lieu of an expensive but uncertain technology build. We also leaned into an innovative technology partnership with the Nutrition Incentive Hub to test, collect stakeholder feedback, and refine a Healthy Corners app that has helped shoppers plan their shopping trips, receive additional nutrition information, and maintain strong connections with our incentive program during the pandemic. ? What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Healthy Corners has partnered with the University of the District of Columbia's SNAP-Ed program to create and deliver nutrition trainings for 13 SNAP Match store owners. During the reporting period, we conducted two trainings on program-related material such as SNAP Match onboarding and follow-ups, WIC onboarding and follow-ups, operational and technical support, sales and waste data trends tracking and goal-setting. These trainings are primarily conducted by the Program Specialist and Program Coordinator. We use training guides and PowerPoints that the Healthy Corners team created to describe the programs and set clear expectations with stores. SNAP Match trainings are currently being divided into two parts, with the initial training conducted virtually and the second training done in-person to limit in-person interactions as a Covid-safety precaution. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our team has direct and ongoing contact with our community of interest through various avenues. We participate in the DC Food Policy Council's Food Equity and Access working group to share program updates and relevant results with community members. We work closely with government agencies like the DC Health Department and DC WIC State Agency. Our Store Champions initiative engages, trains, and provides stipends to two passionate Healthy Corners shoppers who now serve as community liaisons and intermediates with participating retailers. We empower them to share updates directly with friends, neighborhoods, the five stores in each of their portfolios, and other members of the community. Through working groups sponsored by the Food Trust, the Nutrition Incentive Hub, and the National Grocers Association we are able to share and hear best practices for corner stores and incentive programs. Through our Healthy Corners Shopper App, we send text messages directly to community members including pricing and product updates, new stores, and other program information. DC Central Kitchen provides a monthly newsletter to partner retailers and we celebrated Healthy Corners' 10th anniversary with numerous DCCK blog posts, social media posts and a media profile in the DC Line. We ran our annual marketing campaign during August and September with emphasis on our partnership with the DC WIC State Agency and our Healthy Corners Shopper App. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Our primary focus will be on launching 14 stores in the SNAP Match program in the next reporting period for a total of 30 SNAP Match stores by May 1, 2022. We will be conducting SNAP Match annual assessments with each of the stores to analyze their sales, coupon distribution and redemption numbers, and other metrics. This will be done on an individual basis with each store with goals set for the next 6 months to be re-visited and adjusted depending on the success. In collaboration with DC Central Kitchen's Community Development and Partnerships team, we will continue to organize 5 events per month at community venues and corner stores where we will educate SNAP customers about SNAP Match. In collaboration with the developer group Blue Raster, we will continue to iterate improvements to a Healthy Corners Shopper App that offers a wealth of information about Healthy Corners product offerings and store locations, SNAP Match and WIC information and locators, and nutrition and food engagement resources including recipes. Working closely with Appian developers to streamline the Healthy Corners ordering process and create store accounts to allow each store to monitor their orders, view their order history, and navigate product offerings with ease. ?
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In Year 1, DC Central Kitchen successfully transitioned all stores from our previous "5 for 5" incentive program--matched purchases of any SNAP-eligible item with an equal amount of fresh produce, up to $5--to our SNAP Match program. This latter model is an adjusted produce-for-produce model requiring an EBT purchase of at least $5, including an approved produce item, to trigger a $5 coupon for fresh fruits and vegetables. DC Central Kitchen partnered with 16 corner stores and engaged 9,470 unique customers during the reporting period. Through the incentive program, an estimated 27,000 SNAP customers redeemed $193,475 of fresh and frozen produce. In May 2021, the Healthy Corners program began using a new tracking dashboard created by Appian. This reporting system includes coupon collection information and has increased our capacity to track and coach retailers on missed sales opportunities and growth possibilities. Coupled with our 100% response rate on annual store assessments the new reporting system has also allowed for more targeted trainings around inventory management and sales decisions at the firm level. Other firm level trainings include a partnership with the University of the District of Columbia's SNAP-Education program to create a nutrition training tailored to SNAP Match store owners and monthly technical assistance discussions around increasing coupon distribution and redemption numbers. During Year 1, participating SNAP Match stores increased the units of fruits and vegetables purchased from DC Central Kitchen's Healthy Corners program by over 75% per month. This means that participating firms increased the units of fruits and vegetables purchased from 3,715 before participating in the SNAP Match program to 6,575 once they joined the SNAP Match program. In addition, over 80% of the incentives were redeemed in Wards 5, 7, and 8 where food deserts are most prevalent in the District of Columbia. The average spent on fruits and vegetables to trigger the incentive also increased from $1.10 per purchase in September 2020 to $1.30 per purchase in August 2021--an 18% increase in voluntary spending by SNAP customers on produce. All Healthy Corners ordering now takes place online to allow for a streamlined process that offers more ease to store owners in determining their purchasing needs. To support the increase in demand for fruit and vegetables in the participating SNAP Match stores, we also provided 8 stores with upgraded infrastructure including larger refrigeration and shelving units. Additionally, our frozen product line increased by 75% with 25% of these products sourced from local partners and food hubs. 100% of the participating SNAP Match stores were trained and provided with marketing materials around the expansion of our SNAP Match program to include frozen fruits and vegetables. We rolled out the Healthy Corners Shopper app to provide updated resource, product, and store information direct to customers. We collected SNAP customer feedback on our original app roll out and, based on that input we hired a developer group Blue Raster to work on creating a space for community members to access the information they need and want in relation to food assistance benefits and food and nutrition engagement. We are promoting downloads of the app at community events and through the work of Store Champions.
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