How Two Food Hubs Found a New Way to Bring Locally-Grown Foods to Underserved Arizonans 

Last year, over 900,000 Arizona residents received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Nearly two-thirds of those people belong to families with children and a third are seniors or disabled. Until recently, local farmers and food hubs had no way to offer them online SNAP payments as an option to purchase their groceries. 

Two Arizona food hubs, along with some dedicated partners, have figured out how to change that.

A recent partnership between Activate Food Arizona and Rosebird Farms, a 12-acre farm and food hub near Kingman, has enabled Arizona SNAP recipients to access benefits when checking out at the farm’s online marketplace. The new SNAP online option is shifting the way people in Mohave County access healthy produce, meat and dairy products, as well as localizing the benefits from those purchases.

Elyse Guidas, Executive Director of Activate Food Arizona – a nonprofit that works to improve access to healthy, affordable food in the state – helped Rosebird Farms gain federal approval for the new service. She explains the impact of this feature: “The new [SNAP online] technology is one more way of increasing access to healthy food for people who don't have it. It has removed a barrier for folks who previously couldn’t use their SNAP benefits online. It’s also getting more locally-grown food into communities.”

Elyse Guidas, Executive Director of Activate Food Arizona

The Local Co-op

Veronika Jollivette, the CSA Coordinator and E-Commerce Manager of The Local Co-op

In the southern Arizona town of McNeal, The Local Co-op – a grower operated food hub – has also found a way of making local, healthy food accessible online to Cochise County SNAP recipients. Their purchases benefit over a dozen local farmers, ranchers and growers that the hub sources from. 

Veronika Jollivette, the CSA Coordinator and E-Commerce Manager of The Local Co-op, explains their decision to start offering online SNAP: “We want people to have a place to feel proud to use their SNAP benefits. Having online SNAP payment will allow for a seamless customer experience, and they won’t have to do anything different than any other customer, like having to access a separate card terminal like they do when paying in-person.”

Online grocery options are nonexistent for many food assistance program users in Arizona, especially those living in rural and isolated areas. 

“A large percentage of people in Cochise County are using SNAP. The Local Co-op wants to make good, local food accessible to them. Online SNAP helps us do that,” says Jollivette.

Online SNAP has the potential to transform how people equitably access local food. At the same time, for small, local producers, it means they can participate in a market with millions of customers. 

The USDA SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot Program

In January 2017, USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) announced the selection of seven retailers to take part in the initial launch of the USDA SNAP Online Purchasing Program, a pilot designed to enable SNAP participants to purchase their groceries online. The program came about because of the 2014 Farm Bill, which mandated a pilot be conducted to test the feasibility and implications of allowing retail food stores to accept SNAP benefits through online transactions. Retailers had to meet eligibility criteria, such as ensuring that the online payment is secure, private, easy to use, and provided similar support to that found for SNAP transactions in a retail store. 

On April 18, 2019, the first transaction through the SNAP Online Purchasing Program took place in New York. In early 2020, Washington, Alabama, Iowa, Oregon and Nebraska also launched their own SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot Program. In April 2020, Arizona and California were added to the eligible list of states. 

Expanding the SNAP pilot program and adding more retailers was slow to rollout. Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened and significantly changed how people were making purchases. Grocery saw the biggest shift in shopping habits, with large numbers of people who had never purchased groceries online before now making it a regular habit. In early 2020, 63% of shoppers made most of their grocery purchases at a physical store. During COVID, this flipped and nearly 60% of US consumers started buying groceries online.

During this time, SNAP users had limited options for using benefits online, with only a few large retailers offering the service in limited eligible states. Over 40 million Americans receive food assistance through SNAP benefits each month. Large national supermarket chains, seeing the shift in consumer behavior and being able to cover the costs and logistics of meeting the online SNAP eligibility requirements, began offering the service. Small retailers and local farmers, however, were largely left out of this market and a much-needed source of income.

In the post-pandemic environment, nearly half of shoppers continue to purchase groceries online. This year, the SNAP online purchasing program is offered by over 200 food retailers and used by 4 million shoppers per month, and the USDA is opening it up to more independent stores, grocers, and farmers.

Rosebird Farms is the first Arizona farm to be authorized by the USDA to accept shoppers’ SNAP benefit payments online. The Local Co-op is a week or two away from also making this happen as they await the testing phase, the last step for enabling online SNAP payments.

Finding the Right Technology 

In 2020, with support from the Vitalyst Health Foundation, Activate Food Arizona launched a Roadmap initiative to enable the successful expansion of SNAP online in Arizona and develop a path for ensuring a level playing field for diverse grocery retailers, local producers, and SNAP recipients by reducing barriers that prevent them participating in the service. 

A key to adopting online SNAP is identifying the technology that works best for the business and the user. The software platform has to be widely used, compatible with third-party verifiers to validate the SNAP pin for secure payment, and able to function with the business’s website platform. Figuring all this out can be time-consuming and costly. This is where Guidas and Activate Food Arizona come in. 

“We like to be the connector to what communities on the ground need for their food system to be successful,” says Guidas. “For the SNAP online expansion project, we can serve as a technical assistance provider and facilitator to bring this technology to local farms, stores, and businesses.”

Andrea McAdow, the owner of Rosebird Farms, operates a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, or a subscription for pre-ordered boxes of local food with products coming from more than a dozen Arizona farmers and ranchers. She is also the co-owner of West of 3rd, a shop in downtown Kingman that offers locally-grown whole foods.

“Andrea was most ready to adopt the technology. She had created the food hub in Mohave County with a vast network of farmers and had established some delivery routes. It was a natural fit since she was already using the Local Food Marketplace software and would be our first launch,” explains Guidas.

Local Food Marketplace supports online SNAP/EBT for qualified markets. It offers an integrated checkout process, automated SNAP match support, along with guidance updating store settings and products to meet federal requirements and support through the approval process. Local Food Marketplace supports 120+ food hubs, online markets, co-ops, and buying clubs across thirty-five states. 

Activate Food Arizona and Local Food Marketplace developed a resource guide to assist Arizona businesses in understanding their eligibility and how to best navigate the Online SNAP/EBT implementation process.

“SNAP Online gives farmers an opportunity to adapt to growing technology as an online retailer,” says Guidas. “It will allow small businesses to thrive and be autonomous in how they conduct their business with changing technology.” 

Among a dropdown list of retailers in Arizona accepting SNAP payments online, Rosebird Farms is the only farm listed. Activate Food Arizona is working to get more farmers and cooperatives authorized to receive online SNAP payments, including Blue Sky Organic Farms in Litchfield Park, Pivot Produce in southern Arizona, and Sun Produce Cooperative in Maricopa County. 

Meanwhile in the southern part of the state, The Local Co-op’s journey toward offering online SNAP was made possible by Jollivette’s five years of e-commerce experience and familiarity with CSAware, the software that worked best for their business needs and website platform. CSAware was developed by Local Harvest to provide e-commerce tools for CSAs and food hubs. 

Jollivette stresses: “Do your due diligence when selecting your software platform and processor. And make sure it makes sense to you from your budget perspective and what you can manage operationally. There are options and several processors to choose from that are able to process EBT/SNAP online.” 

She also adds, “We are always open to helping other folks do this. If a producer wants help in getting online SNAP setup, we are happy to be a resource. This is a service that folks need.”

A Stream of New Online Paying Customers 

Connecting SNAP participants with local farmers has historically been a challenge. Not only does this prevent Arizonans from eating nutritious produce and protein grown and raised locally, it prevents small farmers from accessing a reliable source of income by serving the millions of people enrolled in SNAP. 

SNAP online can bridge this gap and work to create a more efficient, inclusive, and mutually beneficial relationship between SNAP participants and farmers. 

Rosebird Farms Produce

Online SNAP capabilities have allowed Rosebird Farms to bring their affordably-priced and healthy food boxes to SNAP customers in Golden Valley and Yucca, Arizona, two communities with high concentrations of low-income residents. When people pay online for Arizona SNAP eligible items, they can also earn a matching credit through Double Up Food Bucks to spend on future online purchases of fresh fruits and vegetables. For example, a shopper can spend $15 on eggs, milk, and meat and earn $15 to spend on fresh produce.

Online payment makes it significantly easier for Rosebird Farms’s SNAP customers to customize and secure their local food boxes in advance for convenient pick-up or free home delivery in Kingman, Golden Valley, Lake Havasu, and Flagstaff. McAdow updated the CSA program to accommodate online SNAP payments by creating a farmer’s choice box set up so customers can purchase every week for eligible SNAP food items. 

Over 200 people from Flagstaff to Lake Havasu are signed up for a weekly food box with Rosebird Farms. People using a debit or credit card can pay when they order online, and now SNAP customers can as well. This helps the farm because, without prepayment, if a customer does not show up and pay for their CSA box, they have to cover that loss and find a home for the food. 

SNAP online offers a consistent and reliable market for Rosebird Farms and its network of growers. The farm business saw $600 in online SNAP sales just during their first month of becoming online SNAP eligible, and they anticipate even greater growth as they promote the new feature.

“SNAP Online guarantees a funding stream for farmers,” explains Guidas. “They can grow their businesses because they now have a different demand outlet for their food —  more SNAP customers have access to their foods. If a person says, “I want to support this farmer and this store and shop locally,” they can go to Rosebird Farms and know that they are a part of supporting their local businesses. SNAP is an important economic tool for some families.

For The Local Co-op, current SNAP purchases make up nearly 20% of their sales. “I anticipate this number will grow as we enhance accessibility by launching our online platform for easy SNAP payments,” says Jollivette. “We have a CSA program that is SNAP and Double Up eligible, and we service 60 community members between McNeal, Bisbee, Sunsites, and Douglas. This underscores the significant need for and impact of programs like online SNAP and Double Up Food Bucks in improving local food access in our community. Our main priority is keeping local food local and supporting farmers, ranchers, and small-scale growers in our area.”

To Learn More & Access SNAP Online:

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