Wegmans goes live with EBT payment for SNAP online grocery orders

Wegmans Food Markets has enabled Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to use electronic benefits transfer (EBT) to pay for orders from its online grocery shopping service.

SNAP beneficiaries buying groceries via Wegmans.com and the Wegmans app now can add their SNAP EBT card to their account profile or at checkout, Rochester, New York-based Wegmans said Wednesday. To find SNAP-eligible items, customers can apply a filter that displays only items that qualify for SNAP benefits. They also can designate the amount of their purchase charged to SNAP benefits. A secondary form of payment must be provided as well to cover items not eligible for SNAP and fees.

Wegmans said customers who use EBT as their payment for SNAP purchases will get free delivery for three orders. Overall, the chain operates 110 stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Delaware and the District of Columbia.

“Each week, thousands of Wegmans orders are placed on the Wegmans app and website, and we continue to hear from customers that it would be helpful to be able to use their SNAP benefits when placing an order,” Erica Tickle, vice president of e-commerce at Wegmans, said in a statement. “Adding this functionality is an important step to further increase access to healthy food throughout the communities we serve.”

Wegmans Food Markets had begun accepting accepting SNAP EBT payments for Instacart online grocery orders back in April.

The expanded SNAP capability dovetails with Wegmans’ efforts to help customers make smarter food choices to improve their health and wellness as well as find easy meal solutions, according to Trish Kazacos, corporate nutrition manager at the supermarket chain.

For example, Wegmans’ new Feel Your Best online resource is aimed at helping consumers create balanced meals, form healthier eating habits, simplify meal planning and shopping, and find flavorful meals, including options for special diets. Customers visiting the website can access a range of content and tools, such as recipes for meals as low as $2 per serving, tips for making shopping more convenient by using Wegmans app features, and how to use Wegmans’ wellness keys to see which store-brand products and recipes meet specific diet needs.

“Over the last year, we’ve focused on developing tools and resources to help all our customers plan and shop for foods that support health,” Kazacos stated. “Accepting EBT SNAP for online orders helps to increase access to affordable, nutritious foods.”

Under the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot, launched by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Nutrition Service (FNS) in April 2019, 49 states (except Alaska) and the District of Columbia now allow SNAP beneficiaries to shop and pay for groceries online. Amazon, Walmart and Aldi are the only grocery retailers enabling SNAP online grocery shopping on a national scale. A number of chains, as well as Amazon, also accept SNAP EBT payments for online grocery orders, including through Instacart.

In December, USDA announced a $5 million grant to the National Grocers Association (NGA) to help expand the number of independent grocers offering SNAP online purchasing. With the funds, NGA will provide retailers with technical and other support to implement enable SNAP e-commerce. That followed the $5 million SNAP EBT Modernization Technical Assistance Center grant unveiled in July to help small grocers launch SNAP online shopping.

The USDA also is developing a pilot to allow SNAP consumers to use their smartphones to buy groceries at the checkout counter and is seeking states to participate in the program. The goal is enable SNAP participants to input their EBT card into a mobile device and make SNAP purchases at the point-of-sale without the presence of the card.

As of late 2022, about 4 million SNAP households shopped online, FNS reported. And through December, 178 additional retailers had enabled SNAP online shopping since March 2020, representing thousands of stores nationwide. Participating states and D.C. are now set up to provide 99% of all SNAP participants with online grocery access, the agency said.

SNAP online purchasing stems from the 2014 Farm Bill, which authorized the USDA to test online purchasing for recipients before rolling it out nationally. FNS, which administers SNAP, issued a call for retailer volunteers for the pilot in September 2016 and then in January 2017 offered participation in the initiative’s first phase to Amazon, Walmart, ShopRite, Safeway, Hy-Vee, FreshDirect, Dash’s Market and Wright’s Markets.