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Shoutout to my neighborhood advantage keep for loopholing into furnishing the poor with warm foods via EBT


Shoutout to my regional advantage retail store for loopholing into offering the lousy with heat meals by means of EBT



Perspective Reddit by stuftaminals – View Resource

42 replies on “Shoutout to my neighborhood advantage keep for loopholing into furnishing the poor with warm foods via EBT”

There sure are some dumb rules with EBT. You can get all the sugary drinks and candy and ice cream you want, but not a single cup of hot, black coffee. It’s so silly.

That is so awesome. The rules just aren’t reasonable. I’d love to be able to get some warm food on a cold day with my food card.

A new gas station near me sells “raw chicken” that they deep fry on demand so they can sell it with EBT. But it’s really just the same chicken.

I used to use my EBT to buy Papa Murphy’s pizza and then take that to 7-11 to use their microwave to cook it. Then 7-11 got wise and told me I couldn’t do that anymore BUT I could buy *their* [nasty af] pizza and do the same thing.

We used to do this at our store, but someone somewhere with some kind of authority found out, now we can’t.

Our society makes it so hard for poor people to get a hot meal. I worked in a non profit that “helped” the homeless, but we couldn’t use the microwave to heat meals for them because my project manager was afraid that would make us lose federal funding. So we sent people with bags of frozen food and meat back to their cars where they could rot away. Desperate hungry people, just trying to survive, were given ground beef with no means to cook it and we’re told to be thankful for the blessing.

I’ve always thought that the best thing grocery stores could do is just set up some microwaves. It makes no sense that the chicken on the hot rack can’t be bought with EBT, but once it cools down and goes on the cool shelf it can be.

My old job used to do this, but then we were “caught” and told we had to stop because we were breaking the law.

I’d see people come in and use EBT to buy soda and candy, but God forbid they want to buy their kids a warm meal.

Can’t have that.

A grocery store in my town does this! Their deli foods are “cold” and can be heated up on request 🙂

I got a 7-11 near me that does this. I also see them knocking a fuckton out. Kinda impressed.

A shop near me used to do ebt covered hot meals. You basically paid for the raw ingredients and they courtesy cooked it. I’m talking chili fries, catfish po boys, western cheeseburgers, it was all fucking amazing.

Then the state came down during the pandemic and accused them of buying ebt. So now you can only get the proteins by the lb on ebt.

It broke my heart because when we were homeless it made a tremendous difference on if we had something safe to eat and warm in our stomachs.

I actually broke the law when I worked in a corner store.

I would let people slide with hot stuff as it was freezing cold outside in upstate NY, and a cup of coffee or hot sub helps a lot. Specially when 99% of my customers were on food stamps. Also bus stop right next to me. I felt like shit not knowing if I might get arrested for doing this but known less fortunate people eating hot food beats it.

Most of the Carnecerias in my area have a guy sitting outside with a big charcoal grill who will cook whatever you buy in the store for free before you take it home.

Why the hell can you not buy hot food with EBT? Like what is the actual reasoning behind that? This is not rhetorical

My family had a few franchises where they tried to tell us this. “How tf am I gonna sell all this damn pizza if I can’t cook it for the customer?” They said “not allowed” and we did it anyways wtf?!

I live in rural Maine and my boss recently went on a tangent after installing a new p.o.s system about not accepting ebt for pre made sandwiches and energy drinks. He gleefully told me in front of a whole line of people that he wouldn’t accept my ebt card for my lunch because it was a monster and a sandwich. Lady behind me stepped up and showed him (literally a two second google search result) that energy drinks with listed nutrition facts were covered as they contained more vitamins etc than normal drinks, as long as it doesn’t say “supplement info” it’s covered .

He was visibly flustered at being called out and said “O i didn’t know, the people who sold me the new system told me I couldn’t” which is absolute b.s as they just input whatever info you give them about your stock. People up here are super poor but somehow hate poor people, I’ll never understand the mentality. I had an interview at McDonald’s before I got this job and the manager told me that she thinks people who work there make too much. They make state minimum wage. I did not take the job, though I obv didn’t end up in a much better place.

I apologize as I’ve been fortunate enough to not have used EBT… can people really not use it for warm food?

Had a pretty good rapport with my local bodega owner, just walked there usually for small cooking ingredients that I forgot when I was at the grocery store, sometimes candy or energy drinks when in the mood/in a rush.

I got furloughed during Covid, and unemployment didn’t show for 7 weeks, and I mistakenly drained my savings on my ex’s vehicle when it was repossessed, thinking UI wouldn’t take comically long. My landlord was kind enough to put my security deposit towards next months rent if no money had showed by then, as I lived alone and had a good track record with the property.

I had dried pastas and oatmeal that I was surviving on for a bit, couldn’t afford to fuel my empty vehicle to make it to job interviews. A few weeks in, absolutely defeated, went to buy some ramen and eggs from the bodega when my food ran out, just to make it thru until unemployment hit.

I was counting out change on the counter I’d found around the house and it was getting pretty obvious I’ll probably come up short on the eggs, when the owner stops me and tells me to wait where I am. He comes back with three bags filled bread, eggs, pastas, instant rices, jarred sauces, lunch meats, American cheese, and a frozen pizza. He said “on me, save your money. You pay back later if you can.”

Dude genuinely saved my life and before I moved to another state when things were trending really well for me, I gave him $150, know it’s not much but I wanted to give as much as I could afford at the time

i was pretty surprised to learn that SNAP actually works on the hot stuff from the walmart deli counter. i got a cup of popcorn chicken as a snack for my kids while we did the rest of the grocery shopping and come checkout time, it rang up with the rest of the groceries instead of making me pay cash. i was also able to pay for my wedding cake with SNAP (again from walmart).

also shortly after hurricane harvey, SNAP allowed people to use their benefits at the costco food court, which not only sells hot single-serve meals but also whole cooked pizzas. considering their 18″ pizza is only $10 you’d think they’d want to allow that all the time, it would actually save them money compared to making people buy those tiny frozen pizzas.

I’ve never needed EBT, but when I saw a sign says that the sub sandwich that I was getting toasted couldn’t be toasted if you have EBT.

It’s a free service. Why the fuck is the US so backwards that the people that need help can’t get warm food?!

This actually makes me want to cry, something so basic that can mean the difference between eating and not eating. The system is horrible.

I had to use EBT for a while, it was so hard figuring out what I could get and what I couldn’t. It mostly came down to warm food bad, cold food good. I can see not wanting people to use it on fast food, but warm food from a store just seems a bit much. You can check the labels (at least at Kroger) at the delibakery where they make fresh food and if it’s marked as something like “Cold rotisserie chicken” or “Cold macaroni and cheese” you can still use EBT to buy them. It would be nice to be able to eat it fresh and hot but that’s the price you pay to be poor.

Back when the government felt I was actually allowed to eat, I remember grabbing one of those rotisserie chickens from Walmart my first time with the ebt card. It was just me at the time and I thought that I could stretch out that chicken for a few meals during the week. Imagine my surprise and embarrassment when I go to pay for it and, in front of a whole line of people, I got told that ebt doesn’t cover hot meals. Why the fuck not?? There are a lot of homeless people on food stamps with no way to heat up their food! And you’re going to begrudge them being able to pop in and grab a small bag of chicken poppers even? Ugh.

I truly never understood the mentality behind the cold v hot thing. I was on EBT for about 6 months when I was unemployed in my 20’s. I could buy redbull, I could buy ice cream, I could buy cold pizza. But if the food was hot, it was a no go, you could buy the same chicken strips served from the deli hot case, but they were chilled in front of the hot case. I remember even joking with the cashier that they should package up the left over Chinese at the end of the night and put it in the cool case. Low and behold 1 week later you could now buy cold Chinese from the deli that had been prepared hours prior. It really seemed like it had 0 to do with nutritional value, or “pre-prepared” it was literally about “is this item hot or cold?”

I thought lots of places did this. I hated when I worked at gas stations. The food stamps machine was super annoying. And when it was down, people on food stamps would just leave all their junk food at the counter. We did the same thing with pizza as in the picture. I dont judge anyone on ebt but the machine we had at that gas station was super stupid. Not as annoying as the stupid lotto machine. I hated that thing more than most. I would unplug it just to tell people it was down.

Local seafood restaurant does the same thing all the food is bought raw and can be cooked for free.

One of the local quick stores here can’t sell hot food on EBT. So he broke down the cost of the sandwiches and bagels into the cold ingredients and cooks them free of charge. So for EBT, you can order 2 slices of bread, 2 pieces of meat, one piece of cheese, and use the complimentary toppings available on your card and then he cooks it. Super clever what they come up with.

Seriously. If you’re at a gas station, pay for your food before you warm it up if you’re ebt. Clerks can get in serious trouble and rack up fines if they sell warm foods via ebt. 99% of the time the clerk is dying inside not being able to sell you that burrito on ebt. A lot of them will tell you the loophole if they can.

A local deli in a grocery store takes their hot food, puts it in a package and refrigerates it so it can be sold for EBT.

There’s a store in Vegas that sells fried chicken like this. You go in the store and pay for it and then go around back to get it once it’s cooked.

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