Marketplace - The cost of SNAP restrictions

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Convenience stores face new barriers to accepting SNAP dollars this year. A USDA rule aimed at providing healthier options mean some stores must choose between expanding their perishable offerings — which can be expensive — and accepting SNAP dollars at all. In this episode, we examine SNAP regulations from the perspective of businesses. Plus: Upcoming tech IPOs could shake up your retirement fund, first-time homebuyers keep getting older and Quince might set a new standard for retail business models.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

A holiday does not necessarily equal a light newsday, these days at least. We've got IPOs, homebuyer stats, and the lowdown on a somewhat mysterious retailer that's trending by copying trends. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyra's doll. It's Monday, May 25th. Good to have you with us on this Memorial Day. Over the weekend, it seemed like the Trump administration in Iran. or maybe getting closer to ending the war?

Now progress seems to have slowed down. Of course, all of it continues to impact trade routes and the price of oil. And American businesses are left with little to do but follow the twists and turns. Though twists and turns might just be a part of doing business in America now. To get a temperature check, we called up Daniela Velasquez de Leon, general manager of Organics Unlimited, a fruit importer in San Diego. Danielle, it's great to talk with you again. Great to talk to you, too. So it's been a few months since we've caught up.

Tell me, how's business? What's happening? It's good. It's been a good year. As always, there's stuff going on out in the world, but business has been good this year. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world. What is sort of the thing that rises to the top for you? I mean, I think the biggest thing on a lot of people's,

minds is what's going on in the Middle East. I mean, just from an overall humanitarian perspective, but also just the way it affects every single industry. And of course, the tariffs, which will hopefully start getting the refunds here soon. Yeah, let's start with tariffs. Have you applied for that refund yet? So we're in the process of doing that through our customs brokers. we are qualified to do the phase one refunds. So that would cover everything pretty much from April onward, though we do have some entries that came in from Mexico when there was like that 25% tariff for a few days in late March

that are unfortunately not within that window. When you get that money, do you know what you're going to do with it? It's going to help with the cost increases this year. I guess with what's happening in the Middle East, there's been increases in fuel costs from both Ecuador and Mexico. And so far we've been absorbing that because, I mean, we understand that it's very hard for our customers as it is to try and maintain food prices at a good spot. So we definitely don't want to be contributing to the inflation that people are seeing in their groceries. So that's definitely what we have planned for right now. Hmm. What does that mean?

How do you make the math work on your end? I mean, it definitely means that our margin is tighter, which is hard on bananas that are already a very tight margin item. So we're just, you know, getting creative on, you know, where it is that we can get a little bit leaner so that we're able to absorb those costs. And I think ultimately in the long run, what's better for our customers and our partners is better for us in the long run as well. You know, you're talking about bananas being a low margin fruit. Are you thinking about expanding into other products?

Yeah. So bananas are our bread and butter. It's what my family has always done. It's how we got started in the organic industry. We ventured into papayas in 2024, and that's been really great. We're hoping to have organic coconuts in the mix in the coming month or so. So that's pretty exciting. We're trying to focus on more of a tropical organic offering, trying to see what makes the most sense logistically. what's available locally in our growing regions already. You know, you run a family business. How do you feel about its future?

How do you feel about it now versus a year ago or, you know, as you look into the year ahead? That's a complicated question. It's always scary owning a family business, especially when you're leading it because you, what you want more than anything is for it to succeed because you feel. responsible for the well-being of all of the people that work for the business. You know, it's not just the employees. It's all of their families. It's my own family, right? My family relies on the success of this business. And it's something that, believe it or not, I think about pretty regularly on a weekly, if not daily basis. And when things like the tariffs happen

or what's happening now in the Middle East is going on, it is a little bit of It's scary, but at the same time, these experiences have taught me how resilient we are. And I see what my parents have gone through throughout the decades. And I realize that we are. We are really nimble. We're able to move quick. We have amazing partners. And, you know, I'm confident that we're going to continue to be resilient and find creative ways to keep on keeping on.

Danielle Vulasquez de Leon is the general manager at Organics Unlimited. Danielle, thanks so much. Thanks, Kristen. Wall Street is closed today for the holiday, but oil markets were open and optimistic. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Shares in the Japanese investment firm SoftBank hit a record high today in Tokyo,

thanks to reports that OpenAI, one of its biggest portfolio companies, is preparing to go public. The expected IPO filing from the maker of Chat GPT follows an out-of-this-world prospectus from SpaceX last week. It's set to become the biggest public market debut in history with an estimated valuation of $1.75 trillion dollars. Open AI and Anthropic, which is also predicted to go public this year, are both pushing trillion-dollar valuations. Now, markets have never seen three IPOs of this magnitude in quick

succession. And new rules on Wall Street mean index funds, the kind of investment that dominates Americans' retirement funds, will be buying into these companies faster than ever before. Marketplaces Megan McCarty Carrino has more. Stock indexes like the NASDAQ or S&P are just lists of top companies, and there are trillions of dollars of investment that just track those lists. Each index has its own methodology for inclusion, like company profit levels or how many shares are available, says NYU finance professor Oswath Demodran. What do you do about inclusion criteria that are keeping out some of the largest companies in the

market? Well, you change the rules. Several indexes are fast-tracking SpaceX, so it will be included in a matter of days rather than months. So you're going to see massive, mandatory buying. Michael Monaghan at founder ETFs says indexes, says indexes. funds have to buy stock in proportion to a company's size, no matter the price. This passive investing has grown bigger than funds managed by investors who research companies and make

active bets. The index funds are going to set the price of SpaceX and the active managers will be the price takers. That's unprecedented. Because SpaceX and the AI companies will likely be selling relatively few public shares at first, the rest are locked up with private investors, competition will be fierce, and the price is likely to spike, says Paul Kedroski, senior fellow at the MIT Initiative on the digital economy. It's kind of like that scene in Oppenheimer where you're going to set the global atmosphere on fire. We had a moment where it looked like the chain reaction from an atomic device might never stop. It's kind of like that.

The risk is it's a self-perpetuating process that has no natural limit. The more the share price rises, the more index funds have to buy, driving the price ever higher and forcing the sale of other stocks to make room. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino for Marketplace. More sour news for the housing market is coming in after a slow spring sales season. The first-time homebuyer in America is graying. The median age for first-time buyers is 40 years old, an all-time high, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Meanwhile, the share of all homebuyers who are first-time buyers felt to one in five, an all-time low. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports on what this means for Americans trying to put down roots and build wealth. I meet Kim Tate-Wistrike at his new home on a tree-lined street in Portland, Oregon. Sorry, my dog, she's a rescue dog. It's going to come outside with her first, get to know you for a second, and then we're going together. Okay.

The house is 120 years old with original moldings and huge bay windows. We moved in without anything, just bought a dining room. table, a couple of pack and plays for the babies. 17-month-old twins. Tate Wistrike is 38. For more than a decade, he and his wife lived in Thailand. Back in the U.S. with the young family, they started house hunting while moving from rental to rental. The market was pretty tough, and we actually bid above the market value, which was, you know, felt like a pretty bold move at the time, maybe not the right move. But it was a move they could make, at least, with savings in the bank and help from their parents.

The broker, Israel Hill, sees a lot of similar first-time buyers. Definitely an older crowd. The cost of homes has gone up. Someone needs to have a substantial down payment and be pretty stable in their economics to be able to afford a property. Data from real estate site Zillow confirmed the trend, says senior economist Orfe DiVungi. The typical prospective buyer is 39. They have to have a much higher income than they used to, to grab onto the first run.

of the homeownership ladder. Some analysts have disputed the National Association of Realtors finding that the typical first-time buyer is as old as 40, though NAR stands by its data. Redfin has done its own analysis and concludes the average age of first-time ownership has risen gradually over the past two decades, says Chen Zhao, head of economic research. Partly for affordability reasons, partly because people just do everything later in life. They get married later. They have kids later, right? So they buy a house later.

As to whether it's a good idea to wait until age 35 or 40 to buy a first home, here's Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Advisor Ashley Rousseau. I like to remind people who are going for houses and it might be torturing themselves, right? Owning a home is not the only way to build wealth. She says first priorities should actually be saving for an emergency fund and retirement. Orfe de Vungi at Zillot says delaying home ownership can have a advantages. If you are starting later, invested in the stock market, you're probably in good shape. There are benefits to buying at any age, says Mike Fred and Tony at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

While rents tend to go up with a fixed rate mortgage, a homeowner, locks in their housing costs and actually can result in significant buildup and wealth over time. That's if home prices keep going up and if you stay in the home long enough to build some equity. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. Coming up, people who want to buy nice things, but maybe feel a little bit squeezed by prices right now. Odds are, that describes a lot of people these days. But first, let's do the numbers. U.S. markets were closed today in observance of the Memorial Day holiday.

So let's talk oil prices, which reacted to the latest negotiations of a deal on the Iran war. Brent crude slid roughly 5% to a two-week low of about $98 a barrel. Gas prices dipped slightly to a national average of $4.50 a gallon. AAA estimated that 39 million people would be traveling by car throughout the three-day weekend, a slight increase from last year. In international markets, Japan's Niki rose 2 in 9 tenths percent. France's CAC 40 picked up 1 and 2 thirds percent, and Germany's DACs surged 2%. You're listening to Marketplace.

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This is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is going through a lot of changes. And those changes vary depending on where people live. By the end of the year, more than a dozen states are expected to implement their own restrictions on what recipients can purchase. And while most SNAP dollars are spent at grocery stores, about a fifth of these transactions happen at convenience stores, according to the USDA. Marketplace's Carla Javier looks into how changes to SNAP might impact these businesses. Moto Inc. operates 84 convenience stores and gas stations, mostly in the Midwest.

The company's president, Rob Forsyth, says almost all of their locations except SNAP. And he's generally supportive of the reasoning behind restricting the use of those food benefits to buy sodas and candy. It's just that the devil's in the details. While some states have provided lists of specific products that, can't be bought with SNAP dollars, others haven't, which leaves retailers going through their inventories, comparing ingredient lists to their state's definition of restricted goods. In Indiana, where Forsyth's company has six stores, for example, sports drinks are not eligible. So Gatorade's not eligible, but fitness beverages are eligible.

And then you say, well, what's the difference between sports drinks and fitness beverages? Forsyth says customers trying to buy items that they used to be able to purchase. with their benefits, are complaining when they can't anymore. They're disappointed and they're embarrassed and they're confused. In a statement, USDA said the department wants to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent on foods that support, quote, healthy and nutritious lifestyles. Tatiana Andrejava, who teaches food policy at the University of Connecticut, says, There's no evidence that would show that SNAP participants are buying more unhealthy foods

then sort of non-participants controlling for income, controlling for education. Chris Reedy, chief revenue officer at the Cashback app IBata, says there's some early evidence that self-identified shoppers did change their shopping habits in the states that got waivers to implement the restrictions. Soda purchase activity decreased 15% in the states where waivers went into place compared to 7.5% where they did not go into place. Reedy says there's been a similar pattern for candy purchases. The USDA is also trying to increase access to healthier foods in stores that accept SNAP.

By early November, all SNAP retailers will need to carry at least seven options in each of the staple food categories. Dairy, vegetables or fruits, grains, and protein. And more of those items offered will have to be perishable. This might have less of an effect at the larger grocery stores where most SNAP purchases happen and most SNAP dollars are spent. But Shelley Verplug at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy says meeting the requirements could be a challenge for smaller stores. There might be some new administrative costs and just hassle factors to participate in the program. They may decide it's not worth participating. Which in turn could cause problems for SNAP recipients in areas where a supermarket may be far away.

Those that may lack vehicles or may be constrained in their mobility, if they were, using quite a bit of their benefits at smaller stores and those smaller stores end up leaving the SNAP program, it could really impact their access. For PLUG adds that with changes to eligibility requirements and fewer people receiving SNAP benefits, there's less spent by SNAP participants. And that just makes the program less attractive to stores to participate in for that reason, too. Back at Moto Inc. Headquarters, Rob Forsyth worries if stores stop accepting SNAP, that'll be a disservice to vulnerable SNAP recipients. He thinks most of Modo's convenience stores will be able to adapt to the changes. But at his smaller stores, he says adding foods like green beans, corn,

peas, and diced tomatoes to meet the requirements would take valuable shelf space from better selling items. Who can possibly be against making more healthy food available to SNAP recipients? You know, everybody can agree with that too. But some ideas are good in theory. but bad in practice. Which is why Forsyth says he may have to make the difficult decision to stop accepting SNAP at some of his smaller stores. I'm Carla Javier from Marketplace. There's a sort of curious retailer lurking around every corner of my social media feed.

And if you're a millennial like me, chances are it's lurking around yours as well. Quince. It's a San Francisco-based online retailer known for its affordable copycats of luxury goods. a handbag that looks strikingly similar to one by Loeweve, luggage that people compare to those away suitcases, and $50 cashmere. Amanda Mullet Bloomberg wrote about Quince, how it decides what to make and how it keeps prices low.

Amanda, thanks for joining us. Yeah, it's great to be here. I always enjoy coming on. So for the uninitiated, what is Quince and what do they sell? Quince is an online clothing retailer, although I think it might be a little bit misleading to call it that now. You know, Quince has been around for a really short time and it started with clothes and now it sells furniture and supplements and kids stuff and pretty much anything that you can imagine.

Yeah, I've always found Quince to be really mysterious. Like, to me it doesn't have a lot of, if its own personality as a brand, but it also sells a lot of things that seem to be trending. I also randomly got an ad for quince this morning for champagne and caviar. Tell me a little bit more about what's going on there. Yeah. So it's demographic in the U.S. is, you know, people who are relatively affluent, people who want to buy nice things, but maybe feel a little bit squeezed by prices right now. So it uses a data scraping operation to figure out what is selling sort of across the Internet

in these categories that this particular consumer finds interesting. So if a type of cardigan is selling really well from a bunch of smaller brands, like Quince will note that and note the sort of interesting things about that cardigan and use that type of information to come up with like the most optimized version of a product to fit those existing desires. And then the company has a really enormous supply chain, mostly in Asia, that they then sort of work in order to get the price on those products as low as possible. You know, in your story, people talk about Quince as a, not just a retailer, as a data company, as a supply chain company. How do you see it?

I think that Quince is perhaps best understood as an arbitrage company. What the company has done really, really effectively is look at all of the steps in getting, a desirable consumer product to an end consumer and say, okay, what can we cut out? How can we consolidate processes? How can all of these things be adjusted in order to keep prices as low as possible? People don't really want polyester anymore. Especially these higher income, people want natural fibers. They want organic materials. So if you can figure out how to make stuff in those materials for prices that are closer to polyester. then you can really move a lot of customers away from other products at other price points and

onto your product. Do you think that this is a special retail category, or do you think that this is what companies will move towards in the future? I think that... It's pretty similar to what Sheehan does, right? Right. Yeah, it's very, very similar to Sheehan. And, you know, I thought it was interesting that we recently saw Sheehan by Everlane, which is sort of a... a clothing brand that has a similar aesthetic to Quince, but I think Sheehan wants to have an opportunity to be in play for these higher and higher income consumers who do a really disproportionate amount of U.S. consumer spending. It would be hard for U.S. companies that have to operate physical stores to operate on this

model. But if a company is launching a new clothing brand or something like that in the future, It seems pretty obvious to me that if at all possible, they would try to launch it with a similar type of logistics operation and data scraping operation. Are you a Quince shopper, Amanda? I've never ordered anything from Quince. I have thought about it, but I already have too much clothing. What? I'm surprised.

You didn't order anything for this story, or what has kept you from clicking by, do you think? You know, I really did think about ordering for this story. the brand is a little bit calculated. And like all branding is calculated, but it is so algorithmically driven in my mind that you end up with a product that like doesn't feel incredibly compelling to me, if only because it feels like something that is looking to be like a true neutral. And like that's what a lot of people want in their wardrobes.

People want things that can sort of fit together in a lot of ways. but for people who are looking for like something slightly different, something slightly more surprising or challenging, it just doesn't quite hit the spot. Amanda Mull is a senior reporter at Bloomberg Business Week. Amanda, thanks again. Thank you so much. This final note on the way out today saw this in variety. Memorial Day weekend traditionally kicks off the summer movie season. And the big film this year is the Mandalorian and Grogu, Disney's first Star Wars film in seven years. The film has done $100 million domestically and $163 million globally.

Pretty good, but analysts say it's too early in the run to tell if it's a big hit. Either way, Disney is on its way to at least breaking even. The movie cost about $165 million to produce, about half of the budget of the last Star Wars film. That last film, by the way, was the first in the Star Wars franchise to lose money. Amir Bavawi, Caitlin Esch, John Gordon, Noia Carr, Steve Mullis, and Stephanie Seek are the Marketplace editing staff. Kelly Silvera is the news director, and I'm Kristen Schwab. We'll be back here tomorrow. This is APM.

I'm Rima Reis, host of the Weekly Marketplace podcast. This is Uncomfortable. And this week on the show, we're talking about doom spending. You know, that impulse to spend when the future feels uncertain. Like, maybe I'll never be able to retire or buy a home anyway. So why not book that vacation or buy that fancy gadget? When we ask ourselves, what's the point of saving? We're just going to die or whatever. I think that's the wrong question.

I think the more important thing to ask is, is spending that money even actually making you feel better? Be sure to listen to This Is Uncomfortable wherever you get your podcasts.