I’m sure it’s common knowledge that the reason for smaller grocery stores(Sully’s, IGA, Harvester, Jeannotte’s, etc.) being more expensive than their big box competition is that they are not going to sell 100 of (insert everyday item here) each day to make that discount price sustainable. Living in the exurbs, my early memories include my mother’s philosophy of making the trip to Nashua for weekly shopping at DeMoulas, Alexander’s, or Purity Supreme for groceries, but Razzaboni’s was for supply emergencies, like running out of something that just couldn’t wait for the next routine trip to Nashua, hence the willingness to pay more. I have similar thoughts about Sully’s. Sully’s has other good features, like their version of MB’s Market Kitchen, where you can buy something made less than 24 hours earlier in their own kitchen, then put it in your microwave. Their employees are friendly and appear to be happy on the job, and they often feature local products that are not found at Market Basket.
My positive regard for Sully’s is now in question because they were featured in the backdrop of a WMUR shutdown-related propaganda video suggestive of their corporate dependence on SNAP. As a customer that pays for my own groceries, I’m appalled by the thought of paying more because of SNAP rather than because of convenience. It’s like being slapped in the face by Uncle Sam and then turning the other cheek for a second slap.
There’s no shortage of social media discussion about SNAP, and I’m not here to get into the weeds of it. I’ll just make a quick comment for the record that I wholeheartedly disapprove of it as a government institution. Voluntary charity with local oversight is a good thing, which I will also say for the record. With all that said, I was thinking about some recent tweets by the Domes guy, known locally as Jay Noone. I agree with his denunciations of corporate welfare, and one of his tweets made me think of the WMUR video with Sully’s in it, because other people have commented that ordinary customers pay more (at any grocery store) because of SNAP. Let it be known that I have not done the due diligence and welcome reliable intel in discussing such claims, especially if they come with numbers.
My questions about EBT as a form of payment are similar to those patients and providers might have about Blue Cross (or any other carrier). If a customer spends $100 on EBT-eligible items, whether or not you or I approve, does EBT just reimburse the grocer for accepting it as payment? I surmise it can’t be that simple because the grocer could make up insane retail prices, such as milk being $25/gallon, in the same way that Sofikitis and Jan Schmidt made up $22/hour as the new minimum wage they wanted in bills they have sponsored a few years ago.
I mentioned Blue Cross because a patient can certainly go out of network for a variety of plausible reasons, but when it comes time to be paid back(payment to either the patient or the provider), there are guardrails that often appear as the words “reasonable and customary.” Now consider more questions. Does SNAP have such guardrails? For example, would EBT reimburse Shaw’s, Sully’s, or 7-11 $25 for a gallon of milk sold to a welfare case? I highly doubt it. Now let’s consider the Rockefeller patriarch and his 19th-century Standard Oil business practices.
Rockefeller was known for deliberately accepting losses to manipulate local markets and drive competitors out of business. Do grocers, big and small, do similar things? Moving on from oil to eye care, I think of a former boss. He’s an optometrist who had an upscale store in Burlington. He despised Tufts and VSP because of their rules on price setting for goods and services, burdensome paperwork, surprise store inspections, and mandatory “buy one get one” junk-value collections, which frequently resulted in product dissatisfaction after the sale due to low quality. He hated being yoked to and associated with the polar opposite of Newbury Street, but he wanted that free advertising in the form of membership in the provider directory. He also had similar feelings about accepting American Express, because they took a bigger bite out of the sale than Mastercard and Visa. Now let’s get back to SNAP and EBT.
Item for item, are all of us ordinary customers paying more to ANY grocer (chain store, big box, convenience, rural IGA, or urban bodega) because they accept EBT? If the answer is yes, then what would be the new lower prices if your nearest grocer stopped accepting EBT? It’s something to think about, no matter what zip code you live in or shop in, but especially if you shop at smaller stores more often than you care to admit.
