UC San Diego's Center for Community Health successfully launches the CalFresh Fruit & Vegetable EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) Pilot Project at 79 Mother’s Nutritional Center stores across Southern California
Ample research has demonstrated that fruit and vegetable (FV) supplemental benefit programs work. They reduce hunger, improve health, and provide economic development for farmers and retailers.1 These programs provide dollar-for-dollar rebates to low-income Californians when they purchase FVs at participating grocery stores and farmers’ markets. They have great potential for large impact if they can be scaled. Historically, the two obstacles to reaching greater scale have been technology and funding. In 2023, California deployed a new solution that solves the technology barrier by upgrading its electronic benefit transfer (EBT) system – the debit-card like system used to deliver CalFresh benefits – to allow CalFresh participants to earn up to $60 each month in FV supplemental benefits directly onto their EBT cards. This technology replaced paper coupons and store-specific loyalty programs. UC San Diego – Center for Community Health (CCH) and Fullwell assisted this work by recruiting retailers willing to upgrade their cash register and payment processing systems to test out this new technology. The results of this work, called the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project (EBT Pilot), far exceeded expectations. From February 2023 through April 2024, the EBT Pilot provided $10.5 million in supplemental benefits to 93,000 households – comprising roughly 159,000 people – across 44 of California’s 58 counties.
Our team at CCH implemented the EBT Pilot with Mother’s Nutritional Centers at 79 locations across San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange counties. For every $1 of CalFresh benefits that CalFresh recipients spend on fresh fruits and vegetables at any Mother’s Nutritional Center store, they get $1 back on their CalFresh EBT card (up to $60 per month) that they can then spend on any CalFresh EBT-eligible food (more fruits and vegetables, bread, grains, nuts, dairy, meat, etc.) at any CalFresh EBT authorized retailer.
To create awareness of the EBT Pilot, we ran community outreach campaigns that included printed and digital marketing materials in English and Spanish, while supporting efforts to translate materials into Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean languages. We also engaged partners in social media outreach, county-wide text messaging campaigns to CalFresh participants; created English- and Spanish-language websites for the EBT Pilot, and collaborated on outreach with diverse partners across Southern California – including community-based organizations, county health departments, county departments of social services, community centers, faith-based organizations, and food distribution centers.
The EBT Pilot was so effective at meeting CalFresh participants’ need for supplemental benefits that it ran out of funds far sooner than anticipated – forcing the California Department of Social Services to abruptly pause the EBT Pilot in April 2024. The EBT Pilot was a victim of its own success: forced to pause not because the pilot wasn’t working, but because it was working so well. The new technology integrating FV supplemental benefits into the EBT system allowed the program to scale effectively and efficiently. The EBT Pilot proved there is a viable way to greatly expand the reach of healthy food incentive programs without significantly expanding overhead costs. We have compiled a more detailed analysis of the pilot in the report below.
In June 2024, the California legislature and governor made their largest single investment yet – $10 million – into FV supplemental benefits. This added to the earlier $18.65 million they invested between 2018 and 2023. As significant as these funds have been, they represent seed funding. What is needed now is funding that matches the potential of this program – and allows it to grow from serving tens of thousands of families to millions of families.
We look forward to sharing more information on the EBT Pilot and are continuing to support other nutrition incentive programs at our Center. Please visit our Food is Medicine page to read more about our work.
1 SPUR, California Fruit and Vegetable Supplemental Benefits: Scaling the Positive Impact Statewide, 2022: https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/Policy brief fruit veg supplemental benefits 2-13-22.pdf
Read our CalFresh Fruit & Vegetable EBT Pilot Report here:
CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Project Report PDF