Does HelloFresh Accept Food Stamps?
We get the question "Does HelloFresh accept food stamps" and here's what you need to know!
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Does HelloFresh Accept Food Stamps in 2023?
No, HelloFresh Does Not Accept Food Stamps in 2023.
Sometimes, understanding what’s covered by SNAP benefits and what’s not can be kind of confusing, especially when there’s something that feels like a bit of a grey area.
For example, meal kits that you cook at home are similar to any other grocery items except they may also cross the line into being a pre-packaged meal into territory that might not be covered by SNAP.
When they were making the initial food stamps program that would later morph into using an EBT card and they were laying out which types of products can be purchased and which cannot, they probably weren’t thinking about things like the meal delivery food prep boxes that are becoming so popular these days.
In any case, whether or not a meal kit qualifies to be purchased with EBT is irrelevant if the companies that sell these boxes and kits aren’t taking the steps to becoming eligible to accept food stamps.
Before we dive into whether or not these boxes would be covered, let’s find out if HelloFresh, one of the largest meal kit companies, even accepts EBT as a payment method or not.
Meal delivery kits have been making a lot of waves in recent years, in big part due to their very tempting promotion options, where they’ll send you some highly discounted meal kits in hopes that you’ll stay subscribed and end up paying full price for months and months.
These can be an incredibly handy way to get grocery items delivered directly to your home, in the exact portions that you need to prepare meals for yourself and your loved ones.
HelloFresh meal kits include grocery items, portioned into the exact amounts that you need for recipes, and they come with cooking instructions detailing exactly how to cook it.
It’s basically a recipe, except most of the prep is already done for you, the ingredients are already portioned, and you just need to put it all together.
If you use SNAP benefits to help with the cost of food, a meal kit like this can seem like a great option because you’re not having to stock up on a bunch of ingredients you may not need, and it offers a chance to eat healthy while also learning valuable cooking skills.
You can even save the recipes and instructions they give you, and do your own food prep with stuff from the grocery store next time, to make your food budget stretch even further.
Once the promo period is over, these meal kits can become a bit pricey for the amount of food you get, but they can be a good way to cut down on waste and it can even be a fun activity to make dinner together with someone in your home, whether it’s a partner, a child, or a friend.
Should HelloFresh Accept Food Stamps?
If HelloFresh were to accept food stamps, it would open up the doors for a lot of new people to try out their meal subscription kits, but it’s unclear how many people on SNAP would want to use up a lot of their food budget for a few meals.
HelloFresh and similar meal kit delivery services aren’t the most practical or affordable way to go about feeding yourself and your family.
They’re more geared towards people who are on a less-fixed budget for food and groceries, as it’s a bit of a short-cut/luxury to be able to put together a meal without any of the prep.
The problem is that people who are lower-income and using benefits are probably busy dealing with any number of other things like working multiple difficult jobs that aren’t paying great, dealing with childcare issues, so they may not have the necessary time to do all of their own meal prep.
Think of it this way, a single parent who works multiple jobs would probably benefit the most from the ease of preparing fresh, healthy meals for their family with a kit like HelloFresh, whereas a stay-at-home parent whose partner earns a huge income is more likely to be able to afford HelloFresh.
The person who might benefit the most from the time-saving can’t afford these kits as easily.
For this reason, it would be a good thing for HelloFresh to find a way to accept food stamps/EBT payments.
They could ensure that their meal kits meet the standards to be eligible for EBT, and they could possibly offer more affordable kits that come with enough food and ingredients for a week or two, and are easiest to prepare.
This could be a great program to help lower-income people eat better with real food, with guidance in the form of ingredients and recipes.
At the end of the day, it’s up to HelloFresh and the other meal kits to decide if this is a part of the market that they want to venture into, but it would be a great thing for people who are on SNAP benefits and want to enjoy the benefits of fresh groceries delivered to your home, in a way that makes it easy to prepare tasty and nutritious meals.
Pilot Programs for Online EBT Purchases
There are pilot programs to allow people to spend their EBT benefits online, allowing online checkouts for people on food stamps, which would make the program infinitely more convenient for many, many people, especially with the rise in grocery and meal kit delivery programs.
HelloFresh, however, is not participating in this program and it’s unclear if they have plans to expand to accept additional payment methods, including EBT, in the future.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, you can’t use your EBT benefits with HelloFresh, and the same is true for nearly every other meal kit program.
Hopefully, at some point in the future, there will be better options available so that people on assistance can reap the benefits of these meal ingredient delivery services, too.
Until then, if you’re on a fixed budget, you can always sign up for a meal kit with one of their promotions where they send you free boxes, or hugely discounted boxes.
Just remember to fully cancel out your account before they start sending more and more each week or two, to make sure that you aren’t billed full price.
