Double Up Food Bucks app
Previously, the United States Department for Agriculture had not been able to roll out the Double Up Food Bucks solution electronically, which meant that it had no way to track its uptake leaving it open to fraud. In addition, the solution would need to be integrated with the Point of Sale (POS) hardware which would cost thousands of dollars and take anything up to 12-18 months to deliver which wasn’t feasible to roll out on a wide scale. The Department for Agriculture needed a cost-effective electronic solution that would encourage people to eat fresh produce whilst also tracking what they purchase.
Client
Sparkle
The Solution
Sparkle turned to the Software Solved team in order to access a wide pool of talent to help develop the Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) app. DUFB is a Sparkle application from Snap2Save which is funded by the Department of Agriculture and is focused on encouraging benefit / food stamp recipients to consume fresh produce.
The Software Solved team includes some of the brightest minds in tech and this allowed Sparkle to scale-up and scale-down when necessary. Sparkle not only had access to Software Solved’s team of developers, but it also had access to a wider team of business analysts and project managers to help develop the DUFB application.
Sparkle created the DUFB app on behalf of Snap2Save using its patented POS Bridge™ software that runs on the retailer’s POS system without having to integrate it. Pre-paid, Electronic Benefits Transfer cards (EBT) can then be can then be swiped ‘waking up’ the POS Bridge™ software. DUFB vouchers are issued at the checkout following sophisticated adjudication of the shopping basket by POS Bridge™, that understands how much fresh produce each person has before it prints the coupon to the same value. It also tracks what people are buying when they redeem the voucher, dramatically reducing the risk of fraud and mal and mis-redemption.
The Outcome
Fresh produce sales have increased by over 35% in the shopping baskets of benefit recipients, with an overall increase of 5-8%. $11,477 worth of vouchers were redeemed at one store in one month (March 2021) equates to an incremental contribution of over $3,400 of gross margin in the high margin category of fresh produce. The voucher redemption rate is over 50% compared with national average of 25%.
The DUFB app has proven to be a great sales driver for retailers and resulted in fresh produce moving through the supermarket more quickly and therefore reducing fresh product wastage.
It has also had a positive impact on the farming sector and people’s health by encouraging them to eat fresh produce when they potentially couldn’t afford to otherwise.
