Nourish Up prepares for surge in demand as SNAP cuts loom

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Nourish Up, a local food assistance nonprofit, expects to see a wave of new people coming in for help because of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP under the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Nourish Up takes a load off for people who are hungry.

The Mecklenburg County nonprofit served a record number of people through its food pantries, Meals on Wheels, and grocery home deliveries in 2024.

“We fed 164,000 people. To put that into perspective, we could have filled up Bank of America Stadium twice with the number of people who needed to rely on our services to put food on their table,” said Tina Postel, Nourish Up CEO.

Postel worries about the impact of federal cuts to SNAP under the budget bill.

“There’s not much beauty we’re seeing in the recent passage of legislation,” said Postel.

The feds are cutting funding to SNAP and asking states to make up the difference.

The governor says North Carolina will have to pay more than $400 million a year to keep SNAP funded or risk ending the program that 1.4 million North Carolinians rely on.

“It’s not that we’ve lost any funding. It’s that I’m concerned about the line that I’m going to have around the door at each one of my food pantries in the coming months and years because they no longer have that critical federal program that they used to quality for,” said Postel.

The SNAP cuts won’t take effect until next year, but Nourish Up is already preparing.

“There’s not a food drive big enough to feed everybody in our state, without SNAP benefits,” said Postel.