(NationalUSNews.com) — Due to a new policy, SNAP participants can now purchase groceries from an online vendor known as Thrive Market. The development aims to help many people enrolled in SNAP, also known as food stamps, find quality groceries near their homes. The new online ordering system will become active on February 26th and will span the entire United States. According to advocates championing the online ordering method, people enrolled in SNAP often struggle to find eligible grocery stores near their homes, an issue Thrive Market aims to prevent.
Thrive Market started ten years ago in 2014 and serves as an online grocery store that delivers items to customers’ homes. To use Thrive Market, standard users must pay a subscription fee of $60 per year, but SNAP users can join the online store for free. Thrive Market often supports providing free memberships to families who cannot afford the subscription, but the program will now provide its services to SNAP participants thanks to a policy approved by the USDA. The adjusted policy comes after several trial runs, which included using SNAP at retailers that offer delivery services.
Nick Green, Thrive Market’s Chief Executive Officer and one of the platform’s co-founders, cited the prevalence of children amongst SNAP’s demographic when discussing the policy change. According to Green, Thrive Market’s primary goal is to provide affordable groceries to people in need without sacrificing healthfulness or quality. Green said that the policy enables Thrive Market to help families and ease the burden on people who lack the resources required to afford needed groceries.
While discussing the shift in SNAP’s payment policy, Green did identify several issues with using Thrive Market. According to Green, the biggest issue is the lack of a reliable address for many of Thrive Market’s users. Green claims that the platform struggles to deliver to people in need if they don’t have an easily discoverable address. Despite difficulty with the platform, Thrive Market intends to provide customers with a reliable service and regularly helps the less fortunate, such as people using homeless shelters or various charitable organizations.
Although the eligibility of SNAP payments on Thrive Market enables SNAP participants to access grocery vendors more efficiently, Green expects less frequent shopping from the program’s users. Green said that many users who lack high incomes use Thrive Market sparingly, a likely outcome for SNAP’s users given the allocated budget provided to them each month. Green also shared a brief glimpse at Thrive Market’s planned developments while discussing the SNAP program, hinting that the platform intends to implement artificial intelligence into its shopping processes soon.
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