Propel CEO Jimmy Chen knows how it feels to go hungry.

When he was growing up in Kansas City, his parents sometimes struggled to put food on the table. Today, his Brooklyn tech company makes a free app for people on the federal government's anti-hunger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP .

About 5 million people use Propel's app to check their SNAP balances, and get coupons and discounts on groceries. That gives Chen a pretty good view into how they're being affected by the federal government's unprecedented delay in sending out November payments.

"Their budgets are already extremely tight. There's usually not a lot of wiggle room," Chen says. "So a delay of even a few days on an expected deposit ends up being a really, really huge deal."

Now his company is trying to b

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