Food Lion has partnered with Instacart to allow participants in the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to pay directly for online grocery orders through electronic benefit transfer (EBT).
San Francisco-based Instacart said on Thursday that the capacity is now available at more than 350 Food Lion supermarkets in North Carolina, covering about a third of the Ahold Delhaize USA store base. Food Lion buyers who receive SNAP benefits can use the new EBT service for both delivery of groceries and online order pickup.
Food Lion offers online delivery and collection of food under the Food Lion To-Go brand. Customers place orders through the Food Lion To-Go website and mobile app, both developed and developed by Instacart Enterprise, or through Instacart’s online market. Food Lion SNAP EBT customers will be able to purchase and select qualified products. After adding items to the virtual cart, buyers designate the amount of benefits they would like to assign to the order.
To help subsidize costs for SNAP beneficiaries, Instacart will exempt delivery and / or collection fees for the first three SNAP EBT orders until March 16. Customers must have a valid EBT card associated with their Instacart account.
Instacart and Food Lion have been partnering since 2016, and the Salisbury, North Carolina-based grocery store currently offers same-day delivery and collection from more than 600 of its more than 1,000 stores in 10 southeastern and mid-Atlantic states.
The launch comes after the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) approved North Carolina as the first state for Instacart and Food Lion’s EBT SNAP partnership, the online market giant said. Plans include the ability to roll out at Food Lion stores in Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia in the coming weeks.
Instacart noted that the partnership with Food Lion marks its second partnership with a food retailer, the first being the EBT SNAP integration with discount grocery Aldi in October 2020. The payment service was launched at more than 60 Aldi stores in Georgia and then extended to more than 570 Aldi stores in Illinois, California, Florida and Pennsylvania in the following months. This was followed in December with an expansion to another 1,000 Aldi stores, with service now in chain stores in 29 states – including North Carolina – and the District of Columbia.
Under the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot, launched by the USDA’s FNS in April 2019, 47 states and the District of Columbia now allow SNAP beneficiaries to make purchases and pay for groceries online.
Instacart’s move to integrate the EBT SNAP payment came amid increased food insecurity across the country due to the coronavirus crisis.
“As the country continues to struggle with the effects of COVID-19, we believe that Instacart has an opportunity to increase access to fresh, nutritious food and basic pantry items, by unlocking EBT SNAP payments for delivery and collection services. online food, ”said Instacart in a demonstration.