Every evening, Danielle Howard opens TikTok and records herself while she cooks: a $6 barbecue and broccoli dinner for three, or spaghetti with lentils from the food pantry.
She’s amassed a quarter million followers on the platform since she began posting grocery and recipe videos a few years ago. The 32-year-old northern Indiana resident said she spends $200 a month at Aldi to feed her family of three. She supplements her grocery trips with a monthly box from the food bank because the income from her direct support professional job is about $100 too high to qualify for SNAP. But she said her paycheck isn’t high enough to comfortably put food on the table, and her TikTok page doesn’t bring in reliable money.
Howard is part of a growing cohort of Americans known as ALICE, which stands for asset-limited, income-constrained, employed. While people in this group work, their paycheck isn’t enough to live on, and it’s too much to qualify them for government benefits.
More and more Americans like Howard are falling into this gap in the social safety net and feeling squeezed by the economy: groceries are expensive, egg prices have seen their biggest monthly spike in a decade, and federal policy whiplash is making consumers hesitant to spend money. Parents, especially, have told Business Insider that it’s challenging to afford food alongside other costly essentials, like childcare, housing, and transportation.
As families contend with steep supermarket bills, a rising number of TikTokers are sharing their grocery hauls online — they tell followers which products give the biggest bang for their buck, how to cook cheap meals, and how struggling families can use their local food banks.
Helping others navigate food insecurity through social media has given Howard a sense of purpose. That can mean helping them save a few bucks at the grocery store and also telling them when and how to take advantage of food banks.
“There’s no reason that we should be judging anyone for just trying to meet that basic human need,” she said. “You never know when you’re going to end up in that situation yourself.”
ALICE TikTokers teach families how to maximize their grocery budget
Food banks play a specific role in combating food insecurity for families like Howard’s. Social safety programs like SNAP are typically restricted to households that live at or below the federal poverty line, which is $26,650 annually for a family of three. Although individual food banks can have different requirements, they are often the only source of assistance for low-income Americans who don’t qualify for food stamps.
Howard isn’t the only ALICE creator who has taken to social media to share budget-friendly tips and tricks. Tiffany Bly, 57, lives in North Texas with her 22-year-old daughter Caeleigh Hallman, Hallman’s husband, and their baby. She previously told BI that she doesn’t have any money left over after she pays her basic bills every month, and it can be stressful to afford enough for her family to eat. When she applied for SNAP benefits recently, Bly learned the income from her customer service job was $11 too high to qualify.
Visiting the local food bank has been a game changer: “It has saved us,” she said. “Everything that we’re surviving on we’ve gotten from our food pantry.”
Now, Bly and Hallman share their grocery and food bank hauls on TikTok. The pair cook together, share their advice for affordable meals, and make sweets like vanilla cupcakes or homemade biscuits. Bly said she hopes that her platform is helpful to other low-income Americans: “It’s OK to be scared about how your bills are gonna get paid,” she said. “And it’s OK to use the resources that are available to you so you don’t have to go hungry.”
She added that visiting local or church food pantries and making her own shampoo and cleaning supplies are the top ways Bly keeps her grocery bill under $150 a month.
That’s a big feat in a time when groceries aren’t cheap — and haven’t been for a while. The consumer price index for food in US cities increased by about 28% between February 2020 and February 2025. About one in seven US households — or 47 million people — were food insecure in 2023, per the latest data available from Feeding America. The national food insecurity rate that year was up 38% over 2021.
You can support food banks by simply using them
TikTokers told BI that they share their food bank and grocery experiences so that other families feel less alone. Local food banks receive funding based on demand — so Howard said people should use the resources if they need them.
Both Howard and Bly said that food banks are their main source of canned goods, pasta sauce, frozen vegetables, snack foods, and other basics. They try to reserve grocery spending for items that are less available at pantries, like fresh produce and dairy, meat, or personal hygiene items.
Haylee Bachman, 30, lives outside Seattle and is a stay-at-home mom for her three young children. She said her partner’s income isn’t high enough to comfortably afford food for their household. When they need extra groceries, Bachman said their nearby food bank has been a relief. She’s also enrolled in WIC, a government aid program for women with infants or young kids.
Bachman has been posting about her grocery and food bank hauls online since 2020. She has a series she calls “WIC Wednesdays,” where she teaches followers how to best use the program, and she shares her advice for stretching budgets at stores like Fred Meyer and Dollar Tree.
“I don’t want people to feel embarrassed about their own life or situation because they could lose jobs due to an injury, or they get laid off randomly, or just be struggling with the economy — whatever the case is,” Bachman said, adding. “I’ve gotten lots of messages saying, ‘thank you. I’m going to a food bank today because you made me feel like I can be safe.”‘
To be sure, food banks aren’t a cure-all solution to food insecurity. Requirements for most food pantries vary by region — some check people’s income, others only require an ID and ZIP code.
But Howard is optimistic about the trends she’s seeing online. She’s noticing that more people like her are being open about their grocery budgets in an effort to help others.
“I think that the more creators that start posting about it, the more it’s going to normalize that,” Howard said. “There are more families out there than you think that are using those resources, and it’ll help destigmatize the shame behind it.”
Do you have a story to share about your finances? Reach out to this reporter at allisonkelly@businessinsider.com.
