KVIG Informative

New federal work requirements have cut off SNAP benefits for thousands of Nevadans this year. A grocery store built to double as a food pantry is now absorbing the fallout — and losing money doing it.

The After Market, a hybrid grocery store and food pantry in Las Vegas, has seen retail sales drop by as much as 50% even as demand at its pantry counter reaches levels founder Pastor DeWayne McCoy says he’s never seen before.

McCoy said the pantry now serves about 150 people daily on average, with 15 to 20 new faces showing up each day who had never used the service before. About half of the roughly 140 people who came through on a recent day were seniors, McCoy said, many of whom received modest SNAP benefits before new eligibility rules took effect and now receive none at all.

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New federal work requirements for SNAP recipients took effect this year, and enrollment figures show thousands of Nevadans have lost benefits as a result. McCoy said his organization has signed up roughly 2,800 families for pantry services since the new requirements began in May.

The math is brutal for a business built around the idea that retail sales would help fund the charitable side of the operation. Fewer people can afford to shop the store’s shelves, McCoy said, which means less revenue to support the free groceries going out the pantry door — even as the number of people who need those free groceries keeps climbing.

The strain isn’t isolated to one pastor’s grocery store. Nevada’s broader network of food banks and pantries has described facing a combination of federal grant cuts, rising food costs and the loss of SNAP benefits for thousands of residents — a combination anti-hunger organizations say has pushed demand to record levels this year, according to the nonprofit Nevada Independent.

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The After Market is currently self-funding the pantry side of its operation through donations, McCoy said, with no clear sense of how long that arrangement can keep pace with the number of people walking through the door.

McCoy didn’t build a grocery store to run a food bank. But for the seniors and families showing up for the first time this summer, the distinction between the two sides of his business has already stopped mattering.