Seven Common Mistakes Markets Make When Choosing EBT Technology

Seven Common Mistakes Markets Make when Choosing EBT Technology

Farmers markets around the country have been moving towards accepting additional currencies like SNAP benefits in order to make farm-direct food accessible to all shoppers. However, the nature of farmers markets and federal nutrition benefit programs requires that market operators have special equipment – EBT devices – in order to accept these benefits efficiently.

Many farmers market operators pick an EBT point of sale device without knowing exactly what challenges to prepare for. By now, market managers across the country have learned a lot of lessons the hard way — as a community, sharing this collective wisdom can prevent costly mistakes from affecting your market’s operations and finances on the road to implementing a food access program. This list isn’t comprehensive, nor in any particular order, but it does identify some common issues that we’ve seen market operators struggle with over the years.