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In October, when a federal government shutdown jeopardized food assistance payments for hundreds of thousands of Oregonians, Josh White decided to do something about it.
“Honestly, I did not know much about the SNAP program, let alone how it operated in Oregon,” says White, referring to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, which is federally funded but administered by states. “It was a very simple calculation for me: We are a coffee shop who has food.”
White posted to the Instagram account for Heretic Coffee, the Southeast Portland coffee shop he opened in 2024; at the time the account had about 700 followers, he says. The post said: “If you are losing your SNAP benefits and are unsure how to feed your family, then breakfast is on us. No proof needed. No questions asked.”
Not only did the number of daily visitors at the cafe immediately increase from 20 to 40 to triple digits—160 to 170 per day in November—donations began pouring in from around the world. (The cafe’s Instagram account now has 27,600 followers.)
White wasn’t alone as other area restaurants stepped up to offer free meals to patrons who weren’t receiving SNAP payments. (Benefits were paused Nov. 1 and reinstated Nov. 7 due to an emergency order by Gov. Tina Kotek.) And amid ongoing uncertainty about federal food assistance, Heretic has continued to feed visitors asking for the “SNAP breakfast”—a breakfast burrito and coffee drink of the visitor’s choosing. The cafe is already operated as a nonprofit and, apart from White and a full-time manager, mostly employs volunteers.
White, 37, was previously involved with a different cafe at the same location called Ardent, which was also a nonprofit, raising funds for the International Justice Mission, a Christian organization dedicated to ending human trafficking.
“One of the many meanings [of being a ‘heretic’] is to defy the established institution of something,” says White, who also works as an independent journalist and documentarian and frequently travels to the Middle East to cover conflicts. “I think us doing the SNAP breakfast program, it was the textbook definition of that word. When the system itself says, ‘We won’t feed people,’ sometimes you’ve got to defy that actual institution and feed people yourself.”
According to the Oregon Department of Human Services, between April 2025 and April 2026, the number of Oregonians receiving SNAP benefits fell by 9.2%. Last year, 455,954 households (with 776,467 individuals) received SNAP benefits; by April of this year, the most recent month for which the state has data, that number had dipped to 412,852 households with 707,605 individuals. (DHS spokesman Jake Sunderland clarifies that these numbers represent the total change in enrollment, not just the changes due to federal cuts.) The agency has warned in recent weeks that thousands of Oregonians could still lose benefits as federally directed work or activity rules take effect.
WW spoke to White about how he makes Heretic’s SNAP breakfast program work.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
WW: What was the demand for the SNAP breakfast like at first, and how has it been more recently?
Josh White: Once word got out, we were doing about 100 visitors a day. I believe the biggest day we had was something like 160, 170 people. Mind you, before this, that number was about 20; a good day was like 40 people coming in. What was really beautiful about the moment is almost the minute that SNAP was reinstated, about 100 of those people dropped off. So we were kind of averaging around 30 to 40 people. We’re into the 50s and the 60s now. And the SNAP benefits are kind of in a lot of ways back on the table. And we’re not sure if they’re going to go or not. So we might see that number continually creep up.
There’s also talk about work requirements kicking in this summer. And you are also planning job fairs in the future. Is that correct?
Yes and no. We put out a post about it; I was like, hey, here’s an idea. We would love to, but we’re not necessarily into the planning process. The main reason why we even posted that was, I think for the six or seven months now we’ve been doing this, a good day for us was we were feeding a lot of people. More recently, I’ve realized that actually shouldn’t be the end goal. The end goal should be we have no one to feed because everyone can feed themselves.
It takes about $100,000 a year for us to feed our community—it’s about $7,000 a month just for burritos. Obviously, we’re not bringing that in with donations every month. So there’s a cycle where you go out and you raise a bunch of money and you feed people, and I thought, is there a hidden option here? The hidden option was, can we think a little bit outside the box and actually help our own community get jobs? That’s something that we’re starting to talk to the right people for and nothing is 100% confirmed yet, but that is something that we would love to put on.
How can you afford to do this?
We learned in real time because before this we hadn’t had a year that was over $80,000 in total revenue. We’d never received a grant outside of this year. We haven’t received any big government grants. Everything that’s done here is people who come in to buy coffee. We didn’t have a donation page set up for us until someone in the comments actually said you should set up one and I realized the next morning that that comment had more likes than any other post at that time. Because of that post going viral, more people who were on SNAP and then who wanted to help kind of saw it.
By the end of 2025, we had over 12,000 people who had donated. And a very, very beautiful part of that is, the average donation was around something between $25 and $50. I think the highest donation was maybe $1,000. It was literally people from around the world who were donating to this. We had people from Germany or Australia or New Zealand or Egypt. It was just nuts. I’m like, how in the world did you see this in Egypt?
Last year, the total 2025 donation was $384,000 with processing fees; we lost about $14,000 of that [to processing fees], so it was right around $360,000 that we brought in in donations last year. That was very much the way that we can continue being able to do what we do. We do a little bit of a donation push every now and then. That’s helping us at least truck on. We did say several months ago, you know, we’ll continue this program until it runs out, and we still have a little bit in the bank to make this happen. Hopefully, those 12,000 people from around the world plus more will be able to help us continue to feed Portland.
What’s the atmosphere of the cafe been like since you started doing this? Like, what’s the vibe?
It’s a mix of people who are coming in for the SNAP breakfast, and it’s a mix of people who are coming in to support Heretic or the SNAP breakfast in particular. What’s really beautiful is sometimes it’s the same people. During the big high tide, there were a few weekends where we had a line wrapped around our parking lot. There was an older woman who came in and ordered the SNAP breakfast and then left us a donation. I believe it was 81 cents. I think it will always stick with me. She had a little change purse that she was digging through, and she was actually holding up the line, because she was like, “I know there’s another nickel, and I have to find it.” And like, you only give 81 cents because you have 81 cents to give, you know? So it’s a mix of both.
I’m looking out our window right now. I’m here at the shop and our patio is full. It’s a nice warm, sunny day. And I do see several people out here that I know firsthand that come in regularly to get the SNAP breakfast. There’s a couple faces out here that I don’t know. There’s a person on a blanket in our little grass area reading a book. And I don’t know if you ever watched it, but I can’t stop using this as an example, but if you’ve ever watched Gilmore Girls, it’s very Luke’s Diner-ish in here. One of the words I keep hearing people talk about when they come in and out, they’re like, “This place just feels magical.”
EAT: Heretic Coffee Co., 5120 SE 28th Ave., hereticcoffee.com. 8:30 am–2 pm Monday–Friday, 9:30 am–2 pm Saturday and Sunday.
Funded by donations, the nonprofit cafe has served as many as 170 free meals in a day.
