The Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development is teaming up with Growing Hope to help highlight the quality, diversity, and vitality of Ypsi’s restaurants on August 15 with the sophomore return of the Ypsilanti Food Festival.
Free meal ticket program
While entering the festival will be free, the stalls themselves aren’t, however, they do offer a free meal ticket program. There will be about twenty stalls featuring examples from restaurants, food products and more.
“One of the key components of the Ypsi Food Fest is we do a free meal ticket program,” Deante Bland, the Community Food Hub Manager of Growing Hope, said. “Currently, we accept SNAP benefits, for buying Veggie Bucks and Doubled Up Food Bucks…. They are worth $20 per ticket and are good for each person in the family. They can be redeemed at our hot meal vendors…. It’s a way to enable people who normally can’t afford to come to event to come to the event; and a way for us to also support the vendors who are there as well.”
According to Bland, the program works through funding donated by sponsors in the community, along as funding from WOCED, producing $20 meal tickets issued by Growing Hope. They can then be redeemed at certain locations with signs that identify them as locations that accept those tickets; allowing you to use them like cash. The only caveat, Bland said, is that it isn’t possible to get change from the transaction – if you qualify for the program, and use it, you will need to spend all of the $20 that the ticket is worth, or risk losing any change under a $20 purchase in the process.
This year’s festival
At the moment, they only have 107 tickets available. How many tickets they can produce depends on how many sponsors they get…