Alaska Commercial to launch online grocery ordering and delivery for rural food stamp recipients

A major grocery retailer for rural Alaska will soon be launching online ordering and delivery for food stamps recipients who might otherwise have had to travel to find a store that accepts federal food aid as payment.

By the end of summer, Alaska Commercial Co. plans to add the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits — or SNAP — debit cards as a payment option on its phone app for online grocery ordering. Alaska Commercial, best known as AC, operates 35 stores across the state.

The online ordering will allow residents to get grocery delivery not just in the 35 communities with an AC store, but also in hundreds of nearby villages, according to Kyle Hill, AC president. Residents will be able to order food online from their closest AC store using their SNAP benefits, and have the food delivered to their community via bush plane. Hill said the retailer has been pursuing the option for several years.

“It’s kind of our rural Alaska equivalent of DoorDash,” he said.

However, due to federal restrictions, SNAP recipients will still need to pay for shipping costs themselves with a separate payment method, Hill said. The retailer is pushing for SNAP to help cover those costs too.

There are more than 40 villages in Alaska off the road system that have no grocery stores that accept SNAP benefits. And in some that do, prices are high and fresh food options are often limited.

“There are a lot of folks in rural Alaska who struggle to find a place to actually use their food stamps, or if they can find a place, they struggle to get healthy food with it, and if they can find healthy food, sometimes it can be poor value for money,” Hill said.

This month, the state of Alaska announced it had become the last state to enable online SNAP ordering as an option for grocery store retailers who apply to participate.

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“Let’s say you’re homebound, and you’re unable to go out and get groceries,” said Deb Etheridge, director of the Alaska Division of Public Assistance. “You can order them, and have them delivered, which really opens up the avenue to have access to food. It’s really a tool in the toolbox to fight food insecurity.”

So far, Target is the only retailer in the state that has signed on to the program, with delivery and pickup options in Anchorage and Wasilla only.

The announcement comes on the heels of an unprecedented food stamps backlog at the Alaska Division of Public Assistance that stretched nearly a year, leaving thousands of Alaskans waiting months on benefits applications to be processed. The crisis hit rural Alaska especially hard, where food costs can be astronomical and food banks or pantries are rare.

AC is in its final testing phase, and plans to add EBT cards as a form of payment by Sept. 1 if all goes well, Hill said. The retailer has received a pre-approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state.

Shipping costs can significantly drive up the total cost of the order, and could be a barrier to accessing the service.

For example, an order from Kotzebue’s AC containing three bell peppers, a bag of oranges, 3 pounds of chicken thighs and a box of hot chocolate that’s shipped to the airport in Point Hope would cost $51.71 for just the food but $91.71 once freight charges and handling fees are factored in, according to the app.

“In some ways, in rural Alaska, everything comes down to shipping costs,” Hill said. “And I think most everyone who is involved with this believes that the shipping should count as part of the overall cost of the groceries -- in other words, something that can be paid for with a SNAP card.”

Hill said he’s working with Alaska’s congressional delegation to look into whether shipping costs can eventually count as part of the total food cost. That’s an exception that would need to be granted at the federal level.

In an emailed statement, Sam Erickson, a spokesman for Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola, said she supports “the categorization of shipping costs as an eligible expense.”

The use of SNAP online ordering “could be a major benefit to many Alaskans who may live far from the nearest grocery store and can only get eligible foods at certain times and with high shipping costs,” Erickson wrote.