The Agriculture Department has pressured California to get high prices at small stores under control.
Wic grocery store free#
Some stores even seek to attract WIC customers by offering free gifts of unhealthy foods that subvert the nutritional intent of the program.Īt 23rd and Sanford Market in San Pablo, just over a mile from the Rancho Grande Supermarket, free items offered to WIC shoppers include a bottle of Jarritos, a sugary soft drink, and Abuelita, a hot chocolate mix, an ad shows. “If those expenses are somehow getting recycled into the program, then that has to be stopped,” said Representative George Miller, the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which oversees the program. Inside the store, WIC shoppers are offered free food items for every voucher they redeem there, like an extra pound of cheese, while earning points toward taking home the small appliances too. A flier for Rancho Grande Supermarket promises “Free Gift! For Redeeming Your Vouchers.” over pictures of a blender, a rice cooker and an iron. Some grocers use free gifts and prizes to lure more WIC shoppers to their stores. WIC shoppers have little incentive to seek lower-priced items for their WIC purchases, because the vouchers carry no dollar amount. The moratorium has remained in place as the state tries to reduce costs. In April 2011, when California was deluged with applications by stores seeking to join the program, the state imposed a moratorium on authorizing new vendors.
In 2004, the proliferation of so-called WIC-only stores, catering to WIC shoppers, inspired Congress to impose new regulations on those stores, which curbed the problem. It is not the first time the program has struggled to contain escalating costs. The California WIC program currently spends about $94 million a month on food, according to the California Department of Public Health. “When food costs go up, it reduces the pool of food resources available to serve mothers and young children,” said Mr. In California’s WIC program, they increased more than 4 percent. Between October 2009 and September 2011, food costs to the WIC programs in other Western states went down a combined average of more than 7 percent. While prices are going up in small stores, more WIC vouchers are being redeemed at them. That is twice as high as the difference in prices paid to stores with one or two registers in fiscal year 2008-9. In February 2012, California stores with just one or two cash registers were reimbursed for WIC foods at prices that were 50 percent higher than prices paid to other vendors for comparable foods, according to the U.S.D.A.
Those stores, some of which have been increasing their prices and aggressively marketing to WIC shoppers, can receive higher reimbursements from California WIC than bigger stores do. In recent years, California WIC has seen a flood of small stores seeking to join the program, and it has welcomed many of them. Douglas Greenaway, president and chief executive of the National WIC Association, a nonprofit group. “No one should be using these programs to reap obscene profits off of the backs of mothers and young children,” said the Rev. Under pressure from the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, California is scrambling to bring food costs down.
But it is being hit hard by runaway food costs, driven by high prices at small stores, costing the program tens of millions of dollars a year. The California WIC program, which provides staple foods like milk, dried beans and peanut butter to 1.48 million low-income Californians, is the largest in the country. Less than a mile away at FoodMaxx, a megastore where WIC vouchers are also accepted, the same tortillas are sold for $1.44. Taxpayers footed the bill for the pricy tortillas, which were bought in early April with a government voucher from the California Women, Infants and Children program, a federally financed nutrition program that is administered by the state.ĭespite its name, Rancho Grande Supermarket is a small grocery store located in a strip mall on San Pablo Avenue. At Rancho Grande Supermarket in San Pablo, a package of 18 corn tortillas recently cost $7.80.
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