People who get food assistance can now use their benefits for DoorDash delivery from nearly 2,700 Kroger stores in the U.S.
It’s the most recent expansion of delivery options from DoorDash. Aldi, Albertson, Safeway, Meijer and multiple other stores already participate.
"From the start of our relationship and conversations with Kroger, this has always been something we've collectively wanted to enable," said Charles Shoener, DoorDash’s head of grocery business development and partnerships in North America. "And it obviously takes a little bit of time to get these things live on any platform, but ultimately this was a joint decision and something we were mutually aligned to do."
Around 12% of Ohioans are enrolled in SNAP, which is about 712,000 households.
Shoener said the delivery company wants to increase accessibility for food insecure shoppers.
“One of the recent reports that we ran, we actually found that nearly 50% of SNAP/EBT users on DoorDash were leveraging DoorDosh because they have difficulty accessing transportation to a store," he said. "And so really from day one, this was something we knew we wanted to collectively enable with Kroger.”
Ohio SNAP and EBT recipients can now receive their first Kroger grocery delivery from DoorDash for free from over 200 Kroger stores in Ohio. Following delivery costs will depend on their location and store.
"The delivery fee that they see will be dependent on whether they're a part of our DashPass subscription program as well, which is another vector for us to support affordability for customers across the country," Shoener.
Kroger is one of the largest grocers in the country and headquartered in Cincinnati. It has a number of family companies including Mariano’s, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, and Harris Teeter.
This expands DoorDash's SNAP/EBT delivery footprint to about 57,000 locations across the United States.
Shoener said DoorDash conducted a study, finding that SNAP users on DoorDash are two times as likely to live in a food desert, relative to non-SNAP users.
“So really going back to the core of what we want to do of empowering local communities, we see this as a critical vector to continue increasing affordability for our customers really across the nation who have challenges accessing affordable food," he said.
Customers can add their SNAP/EBT cards directly in the DoorDash app.
Nearly 5 million customers across the country have already added a SNAP card as a payment method on DoorDash.
Shoener said they have seen massive customer engagement like this since launching SNAP/EBT accessibility on their app a couple of years ago.
"The engagement we've seen with the customer base continues to tell us that being able to access convenient delivery for affordable food is a really critical thing for customers across the country and something we're going to continue doubling down on," he said.
