May 6, 2026
A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has cooked up a proposal to resolve a longstanding complaint about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): They want to finally let the people eat hot chicken.
Families receiving assistance through SNAP are barred from spending their benefits on hot, ready-to-eat food, but the proposed Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act, which passed in the House on May 1, carves out one exception: hot rotisserie chickens. The bill's sponsors say this grocery store favorite is a cheap and nutritious source of protein for families on the go, and the move is "common sense." The bill now heads to the Senate as part of a broader farm bill (1).
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U.S. senators John Fetterman (a Democrat from Pennsylvania), Jim Justice and Shelley Moore Capito (both Republicans from West Virginia) and Michael Bennet (a Democrat from Colorado) put forward the bill (2). It would amend the Nutrition Act of 2008 to specifically add "hot rotisserie chicken" to the definition of "food."
The National Chicken Council is all-in on the proposal, adding a gushing statement of support to Fetterman's press release (3) — but not everyone is sold.
Congresswoman Grace Meng, a Democrat from New York, questioned why chicken is being singled out. She introduced a bill of her own, the Hot Foods Act for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, to do away with the hot-foods ban altogether, which she called "outdated," according to reporting in The Hill (4).
The rotisserie chicken economy, explained
How did the rotisserie chicken become so iconic in American grocery stores that it ended up with its own bill in the senate?
Well, Americans love chicken. It became inexpensive and exploded in popularity during the Second World War because, unlike other meats, it wasn't rationed (5). By 2025, Costco was selling 431,000 rotisserie chickens per day in its stores (6).
Secondly, according to CBC reporting, rotisserie chicken works as a form of marketing called a loss leader (7). That means retailers hope that when you follow your nose to the hot-food station, you will buy not just a rotisserie chicken (which they may sell you for less than it cost them) but some potato wedges and cold drinks too. And then a few impulse purchases at checkout. They can come out ahead, even if they don't make a profit off of the chicken itself. Costco, for one, has kept the price of its rotisserie chickens (8) essentially locked in for years, which may be worth it in the prices consumers pay for additional items, including memberships.
Thus, it's famously cheaper to buy a cooked chicken than a whole fresh one, especially if you're using SNAP. Stores have devised a workaround for the hot-foods ban. They pull some of their rotisserie chickens off the spit and sell them cold, often at a discount, especially for SNAP recipients — a process the chicken council says compromises quality and wastes energy.
To put this in perspective: To get the best deal on whole fresh chicken at Walmart right now, you would have to buy two 5.5-pound birds, have room to store them (not a given for low-income people) and spend $15.27. A 2.25-pound chilled rotisserie chicken, on the other hand, is $3.97 (9).
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Cooked chickens cost about 33% more by weight, but that's about as much water as is lost during the cooking process (10), and you save on cooking oil, seasonings and the cost of running your oven.
So rotisserie chicken is cheap — artificially cheap. Other food-away-from-home items (which can include hot ready-to-eat items sold at grocery stores) on the other hand, have gone up in price by 3.8% in the past year according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) (11).
That means the chicken-omics may not translate when it comes to allowing other hot foods on SNAP. However, if Meng’s bill or a similar one can ever pass Congress, SNAP recipients would not be limited to hot chicken and could also purchase “hot sandwiches, soups and more.”
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Why you can't buy hot food on SNAP
According to a review of research on SNAP published by National Academies Press in 2013, the program has never allowed recipients to purchase hot ready-to-eat food, with narrow exceptions for some elderly, disabled, homeless (12) or institutionalized people, as well as in emergency situations (13).
SNAP benefit amounts are calculated based on a hypothetical meal plan that assumes all food is prepared and eaten at home. That isn't realistic, especially given how many poor people lack space to prepare or store food at home, not to mention the time and energy (14) it takes to cook meals. The USDA knows this, and back in 2024, did some research into changing its standard (15).
Eating hot foods in restaurants, including fast food, is another restriction for most SNAP recipients. According to older research cited in that 2013 review, SNAP benefit amounts would need to increase by 7% if even one meal out per week was factored into the cost (16). With restaurant prices rising sharply, allowing hot foods other than deeply discounted chicken to be purchased with SNAP could be a significant expense.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
Fox 5 DC (1); The Washington Post (2); U.S. Senate (3); The Hill (4); National Park Service (5); Yahoo Finance (6); CBC (7); The Takeout (8); Walmart (9); ScienceDirect (10); U.S. Department of Agriculture (11),(12),(13),(15); National Center for Biotechnology Information (14); National Academies Press (16)
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Genna Buck is a podcaster and college instructor who edits for Moneywise.
