The first thing you see at Come Thru Market isn't a cash register or an EBT machine. It's a free fridge.

Once you enter the fence that marks the grounds of the market, you’re greeted by the standard farmers market info table, but right next to it is something unusual: a booth full of fresh produce that's free to anyone who walks up. Nobody asks for a card or a reason. That layout is on purpose.

"Come through and get what you need, not come through and buy what you want," said Allinee "Shiny" Flanary, executive director of Black Food Sovereignty Coalition and the Come Thru Market. In late September, she walked me through it alongside Rose Williams-Guevara, who works in corporate relations at the Oregon Food Bank and is the current board president of the Oregon Farmers Markets Association, and Hazel Valdez, executive director of the Oregon Farmers Markets Association. September was Hunger Action Month, and Oregon Food Bank's theme this year was "Rethinking Hunger."

Come Thru Market is a small market. But the way it's built — free food first, benefits second, shopping third — looks a lot like what Portland needs right now, as the federal safety net shrinks and more Oregonians than ever line up for help.

Oregon's hunger numbers were headed the wrong way even before Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July.

Visits to food banks, pantries and meal sites in the Oregon Food Bank network hit a record 2.9 million in 2025. That's up 51% in two years, and nearly double the 1.5 million visits in 2019. About 1-in-7 people in Oregon and Southwest Washington face food insecurity, including about 1-in-6 kids, according to Oregon Food Bank's 2026 State of Hunger report. Grocery prices, meanwhile, are up more than 30% since 2019.

Now SNAP is shrinking. About 646,000 Oregonians got benefits in June, roughly 126,000 fewer than a year earlier, according to state data reported by OPB. More than 36,500 people lost benefits for not meeting new federal work requirements. Those rules now cover adults 18-to-64 without a child under 14 at home, who must show 80 hours a month of work, volunteering or job training to qualify for benefits.

That matters because SNAP does most of the heavy lifting. In Oregon, SNAP provides about seven meals for every one meal that comes through the food bank network. When SNAP shrinks, pantries can't fill the hole on their own.

Williams-Guevara described meeting someone in the Columbia River Gorge whose monthly SNAP benefit had dropped from $120 to $23.

"What do you buy with $23?" she asked.

Flanary was a vendor before she was a market manager. She started Come Thru Market, a BIPOC-led market that first ran in 2019, because "no one was helping me succeed at the market." Its farmer training program has since graduated five cohorts.

The free booth started as a farmer idea, too. Today it's stocked with produce bought from Black, Brown and Indigenous growers, paid for with support from the Portland Clean Energy Fund. The market also recovers about 1,200 pounds of produce a week, Flanary said, nearly 18,000 pounds during the 2026 market season.

The free booth isn't the only door in. Come Thru is an after-school market, so most of its outreach right now is through the POP (Power of Produce) Club, a kids' program that gives children $20 per market to spend on produce, paid for by the Portland Children's Levy. 

"That's been a game changer for us," Flanary said. 

Jake, who runs the market's food hub, works with school pantries and affordable housing along MLK. By the time someone reaches the info booth, the market has usually reached them a few times already.

The number one question Flanary hears from other market managers: Aren't your farmers mad about giving food away for free?

No, she says. Shoppers pick up what they need at the free booth, then ask where they can buy other products, like tomatillos.

"When people arrive and see the free booth first, the stigma disappears," Flanary said. "They can use their EBT funds with dignity and max out their Double Up Food Bucks with our team."

Double Up matches SNAP dollars, up to $20 in Oregon, for fruits and vegetables. It's offered at 216 farmers markets, farm stands, grocers and CSAs statewide, which redeemed nearly $5.5 million in SNAP and Double Up dollars in 2024, according to the Farmers Market Fund. Because the program has its own funding stream, it isn't directly hit by the federal SNAP changes.

"When you spend money at a farmers market, it stays local," Williams-Guevara said. "It supports your neighbors."

You can see it booth by booth. Prosper Hezumuryano of Happiness Family Farm has farmed on Sauvie Island for 10 years. He grows specialty African eggplant and African corn — not sweet corn, but corn for grain and traditional dishes — that customers order ahead. A few booths down, Anita serves Sierra Leonean "roast roast" chicken, coconut rice and ginger beer, while raising a family and working on her master's at Portland State University.

For small businesses, the market is also a testing ground. Eliia and Lenor, who turned a family restaurant into a line of hot sauces and seasonings, said Come Thru gives them "direct customer feedback" before their products hit store shelves.

Here's the catch. Much of what makes Come Thru Market work runs on grants that may not last.

The biggest is Oregon's Climate Resilience Grant (CRG) program, which the Legislature funded in 2023 and OFMA administers. Valdez said OFMA has passed about $3 million in grants to 75 markets across the state from 2024 to 2026. Demand has outpaced the money: in the first round, funded markets got just 38% of what they asked for, according to an OFMA report to lawmakers.

At Come Thru Market, that money paid for misting fans, air-quality masks on heat dome days and an emergency action plan. It also paid for Flanary's job.

"Without CRG funding, there would be no market manager for Come Thru this year," she said.

Valdez plans to make that case at the Governor's Resilience Summit in October, pressing state leaders to keep funding market management and climate resilience.

Come Thru Market is still planning to grow. Its old venue, the Redd in Southeast Portland, couldn't host a weekly market. Its new home at Open Signal in Northeast Portland’s Eliot neighborhood, will, and Flanary hopes to go weekly next year.

Oregon Food Bank's "Rethinking Hunger" theme asks people to rethink who goes hungry, and why. Come Thru Market asks a similar question: What if nobody had to prove they needed help before they got it?