A Republican congressman introduced legislation Thursday that would prevent restaurants from accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, seeking to eliminate a decades-old program that allows certain food-stamp recipients to purchase prepared meals.
Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, is proposing the Ending Restaurant Purchases with SNAP Act, which would abolish SNAP’s Restaurant Meals Program. The initiative currently permits qualifying recipients to spend their benefits on hot, ready-to-eat meals at participating restaurants.
“SNAP is supposed to help struggling Americans put nutritious food on the table, not stick taxpayers with the bill for fast food,” Gill said in a statement.
“More than half a billion dollars in SNAP benefits have gone to restaurants through this loophole in just two years while the Trump administration is working to get junk food out of the program,” he added.
About $524 million in SNAP benefits was used at restaurants across nine participating states between June 2023 and May 2025, according to previously reported data.
California represented by far the largest share of that total, with approximately $475 million in restaurant purchases. Arizona recorded another $41.4 million, while roughly $3.6 million was spent through the program in New York.
Michigan, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Illinois, Virginia and Maryland were the other states participating in the Restaurant Meals Program.
The program traces its origins to the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977. It was established to give certain SNAP beneficiaries access to prepared food when they are unable to cook meals themselves or do not have sufficient facilities for cooking or storing food.
Existing federal regulations allow individual states to decide whether to participate. Eligibility is limited to certain SNAP recipients, including elderly, disabled and homeless individuals.
Gill’s proposal would prohibit restaurants from taking part in the program while continuing to permit public agencies and nonprofit organizations to provide meals to SNAP recipients. Programs that deliver meals to elderly and disabled beneficiaries, for example, would remain permissible.
The legislation is part of a wider Republican effort to impose additional restrictions on what can be purchased with SNAP benefits, particularly products lawmakers say provide little nutritional value.
During a congressional hearing in June, Gill pressed Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP Policy and Advocacy at the Food Research and Action Center, over whether taxpayers should subsidize purchases of soft drinks through the food-assistance program.
“Do the American people need Coca-Cola to survive?” Gill asked.
“I think most people can rationally say that you don’t need Coca-Cola to survive,” he later added.
Gill also joined Republican lawmakers headed by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, in July in asking the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments to examine restaurant spending through SNAP and consider whether tighter restrictions were warranted.
In making that request, the lawmakers argued that the Restaurant Meals Program has evolved far beyond the limited accommodation it was originally intended to provide.
“What was originally intended as a narrow accommodation for individuals unable to store or prepare food, the program has grown and is now dominated by large national fast-food and quick-service chains,” they wrote in a letter to the departments.
