THE GOVERNMENT TOLD 10,000 NEW YORK BODEGAS TO STOCK 84 ITEMS OR LOSE FOOD STAMPS

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, the morning after Election Day, a federal rule changed what a New York corner store has to keep on its shelves to take food stamps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture now asks for at least seven kinds of food in each of four groups, three of each, 84 items at minimum. New York has about 10,000 bodegas, amNY reported, and about 1.6 million New Yorkers get SNAP, by the mayor's count. Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked for six more months. USDA said no. Here is what a store needs now, item by item, and the rules USDA wrote in over the past month that decide what counts.

USDA published the final rule in the Federal Register on May 8 and gave stores six months. It carries out an instruction from Congress in the 2014 farm bill, Agri-Pulse reported. The old rule asked for three varieties in each group and 36 units on the shelf, the National Agricultural Law Center wrote, which comes to 12 varieties. The new floor is 28. The four groups are dairy, grains, protein, and fruits or vegetables. A store needs seven varieties in each one, on display every day it's open, and at least three units of every variety. A unit is however the food is normally sold: a can, a bag, a box, a bunch, a carton, or a single apple if the store sells apples one at a time. Three of the four groups have to include something perishable, which can be fresh, refrigerated or frozen.

Butchers, fish markets and produce stands are exempt. Every other store that takes EBT is in, from a 24-hour bodega on the Grand Concourse to the convenience store at a gas station. Customers can still buy butter, jerky and snack bars with SNAP. Those foods just stopped counting toward the shelf.

A variety is a food distinct from another food in the same group. USDA's rule page gives the examples, and they read like a bodega shopping list.

Dairy: whole milk, buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, shredded cheddar, soy milk, infant formula. Shelf-stable milk and refrigerated milk are different varieties. So are plain and flavored refrigerated milk, which means a carton of whole milk and a carton of chocolate milk in the same cooler fill two slots. Cream counts on its own. Shredded cheese is a separate variety from block or sliced cheese. Lactose-free milk is the same variety as regular milk, and plant-based milks can fill at most three of the seven dairy slots.

Grains: sourdough bread, whole wheat bagels, whole grain spaghetti, quick oats, brown rice, pearled barley, white flour, infant cereal. Whole wheat bread and white bread are two varieties, and so are whole grain pasta and regular pasta. Tortillas count as bread, and so do hot dog and hamburger buns. Brown rice and white rice are one variety, under the FAQs USDA posted at the end of October. Plain oats and flavored instant oatmeal are two.

Protein: chicken breast, ground beef, frozen salmon fillets, canned tuna, eggs, peanut butter, lentils. Meat from each animal is its own variety, and plain, seasoned and shelf-stable versions of the same meat are separate varieties too. Turkey deli meat counts as turkey. Pepperoni counts as pork. Dry beans of every kind, black, pinto, kidney, are one variety, and canned beans are another.

Fruits or vegetables: every distinct fruit or vegetable is its own variety, so apples and oranges fill two slots. Raisins count as grapes. A bagged salad kit counts as lettuce. Fruit chips don't count.

Some food no longer counts at all. Butter, jerky, cheese dips, fruit spreads, trail mix and snack bars are now what USDA calls accessory foods. Cream cheese in a tub is a spread and doesn't count, while a block of cream cheese does. Hot food doesn't count. Neither does anything cold the store makes on site and sells ready to eat, so the sandwiches from the counter add nothing to the 84.

The list kept moving after the rule was final. On Oct. 13 the agency issued a clarification that peas belong in protein, Agri-Pulse reported, citing Rob Forsyth of the fuel retailer FKG Oil. The FAQs now put every pea there, from frozen green peas to split peas. Nuts went the other way. Cashews, almonds, sunflower seeds and peanut butter are all one variety, so a store with five kinds of nuts on the rack has filled one protein slot. Forsyth told Agri-Pulse the requirements aren't intuitive. "Large and small operators are going to mess up," he said.

USDA posted the FAQs on Oct. 30, less than three full business days before the deadline, by the count of NACS, the convenience-store trade group, Agri-Pulse reported. So here is what counts twice. Fresh chicken and canned chicken fill two slots. Plain milk and chocolate milk fill two. Here is what counts once. Brown rice and white rice, dry black beans and dry pinto beans, and peanut butter and a bag of almonds each fill a single slot. For a bodega with little shelf space and one cooler, those lines decide whether the 28 slots get filled from what's already there or from a new order.

In August more than 200 convenience retailers wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins asking for more time, amNY reported. On Sept. 29, 12 Republican senators led by Jim Justice of West Virginia and Roger Marshall of Kansas asked her to push back the deadline, NACS reported. "November 4 is just too soon," said Margaret Mannion, its director of government relations. On Oct. 27, NACS and two other trade groups asked for a grace period of at least 90 days after USDA published all of its written interpretations, Agri-Pulse reported.

On Nov. 2, Mamdani wrote to Rollins asking USDA to hold off enforcement until May 4, 2027. He wrote that small independent stores hadn't had enough time, that the rule could strip SNAP authorization from a significant number of the city's bodegas, and that six months without SNAP revenue could decide whether a thin-margin store survives, amNY reported. More than 100 bodega owners had already contacted the city about the requirements, according to City Hall. The same day he spoke with workers at La Union, a grocery inside Brooklyn's Moore Street Market.

USDA answered in public the next day. A spokesperson said stores had to comply on Wednesday and that "Compliance will be measured at authorization and reauthorization," amNY reported. The agency says Congress ordered stricter standards in 2014 and that administrations since then failed to carry them out. As of Nov. 4 there is no extension and no grace period, Agri-Pulse reported.

The check comes when a store applies to take SNAP or renews. Existing stores generally renew every five years, though USDA can look at a store any time, amNY reported. A store that doesn't meet the standard is withdrawn and can reapply six months after the withdrawal date, USDA's rule page says. A new store that gets denied waits six months too.

Six months is a long time at a corner store. Bodega organizations estimate SNAP is 15 to 20 percent of a typical store's sales, amNY reported, and Francisco Marte of the Bodega and Small Business Group gave Healthbeat the same range in October. Some Bronx owners told the mayor it runs as high as 30 percent. Yomary Pichardo, who manages a bodega on the Grand Concourse in Tremont, told Healthbeat SNAP is up to 30 percent of her revenue. "If I didn't accept EBT, I'd be forced to close the store," she said.

The customers were already stretched before Nov. 4. About 26,500 New Yorkers lost SNAP under new federal work requirements this year, Healthbeat reported, many of them with roughly $200 a month less for food. The Bronx has the highest share of residents on SNAP in the city, 33 percent, followed by Brooklyn at 22.

USDA says the rule gives SNAP shoppers more choices, and on paper the list is longer: 28 kinds of food where there used to be 12. For a shopper whose corner store fails the count, the choice is a longer walk with the same card. The government wrote the list, changed how it counts three weeks before the deadline and turned down every request for time. The cost of getting the shelf wrong lands on the stores that sell milk by the carton and plantains by the bunch, and on the New Yorkers who buy them there with an EBT card.

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