Food Stamps Altering How Retailers Do Business

Reuters ^ | December 20th 2009

[Steelfish]

Food Stamps Altering How Retailers Do Business Record number of Americans — 37 million — depend upon the benefit

By Nicole Maestri and Lisa Baertlein

SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES - At 11 p.m. on the last day of the month, shoppers flock to the nearest Walmart. They load their carts with food and household items and wait for the midnight hour. That's when food stamp credits are loaded on their electronic benefits transfer cards.

"Once the clock strikes midnight and EBT cards are charged, you can see our results start to tick up," says Tom Schoewe, Wal-Mart Stores Inc's chief financial officer.

As food stamps become an increasingly common currency in a struggling U.S. economy, they are dictating changes in how even the biggest retailers do business.

From Costco to Walmart, store chains are rethinking years of strategy as they watch prized customers lose jobs and turn to this benefit, the stigma of which is disappearing not just in society, but in corporate America.

Besides staffing up for the spike in shoppers on the first day of the month, retailers are adjusting when and what they stock, updating point-of-sale systems to accept food stamps and shifting expansion plans to focus on lower-income shoppers.

Take Costco Wholesale Corp, a warehouse club operator that caters to middle income Americans who must pay $50 a year to shop in its stores. Nudged along by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who threatened legal action, Costco began accepting food stamps at a few New York stores in May. It now plans to clear the payments in all of its 413 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico.

[smokingfrog]

I think it is outrageous that these grocery stores and retail chains are making such obscene profits from selling food! Food is a human right. We need government run stores where people can get free food to compete with the private sector. Plus, if these publicly owned stores are making so much money off the government, the government should require them to only sell healthy food.

[swmobuffalo]

I understand your point about what they can buy.

My point was from first hand experience. You can buy junk at a convenience store but not hot prepared food. Doesn’t make sense.

And I’m not for sure but I think wedding cakes aren’t on the list of approved foods.

[SortaBichy]

In California you can!