EBT or food stamps/SNAP are supplemental programs for buying food for low-income families. There are a lot of restrictions on what you can and can’t buy with your EBT card, but are gingerbread house kits included?
Gingerbread house kits are generally included as something that you can buy with an EBT card or food stamps at a grocery store. That’s because they’re usually tagged as being a food product, so if they’re coded that way you should be able to buy them.
To avoid finding out that they don’t include them in eligible items, you should check with the customer service desk at the store. If they have them coded as something other than a food product you might run into problems at the checkout.
Basically, if grocery stores consider the kits to be food, you’re fine to buy them with an EBT card. But what about other types of stores?
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Can you use EBT cards to buy gingerbread house kits at craft stores?
I checked with a few major craft store chains including Michaels and Hobby Lobby and none of them are set up to accept EBT cards. This is because they don’t code their products as food even if they could be considered to be edible.
Most craft stores do sell gingerbread house kits, but they’re coded in as “seasonal” or “party” items. They wouldn’t scan in as a food item, so they wouldn’t be eligible to be purchased with an EBT card.
Your best bet would be to go to a store that has a full line of groceries because they’ll be registered with the state to accept EBT for food, and they’ll probably include the kits in that category.
Can you use EBT to buy gingerbread house kits at Walmart?
Walmart does consider gingerbread house kits to be a food item, so yes, you can buy them using EBT cards there. They’re coded in a way that they’ll scan in as food when you check out, so you shouldn’t have a problem buying them.
Before you do that, though, you might want to check to see if you have some of the ingredients to make the house yourself, and buy the other ingredients instead.
It could save you some money if you’re willing to put a little work into making the pieces, but it might not, depending on how much stuff you would have to buy.
Walmart sells those kits at a pretty cheap price, and some of them are little mini kits that have 3 or 4 small houses in one kit.
If you get one of those, and you have little kids, each kid can have their own little house to decorate and you can get away with only buying one kit!
You can also buy graham crackers or pop tarts and make houses out of those using a little box inside to prop them up.
That can end up being cheaper if you have more than one kid, because buying the kits can eat up a lot of your food budget!
What’s another way to save money on the kits?
If you’re willing to think ahead, you can buy the gingerbread house kits when they go on sale after Christmas, or even right before. Walmart and other grocery stores tend to mark them down when it gets close to Christmas because they want to sell them all. That means you’ll be able to get more for less money.
When I was at Walmart the week before Christmas they had the kits marked down, so that would be the time to get them.
There’s no reason why you have to do your decorating party early in December, and it can be a fun activity for Christmas Eve or for the week before Christmas when the kids are home from school and are driving you crazy.
You can also get them really cheap right after Christmas and save them until the next year.
The kits are sealed up in plastic, so you can store them and they’ll be fine the next year.
Honestly, they don’t taste all that great when they’re new, and they’re designed to not be perishable so that they can sit on store shelves for a long time.
Plus, kids usually only want to eat the candy anyway, so even if they try to bite the gingerbread it won’t be something that they want to eat.
Saving a kit for a year won’t matter, and it can save you some money if you’re willing to store things.
Here’s another article about saving money on gingerbread houses, because the cost can start to add up!
So basically, the short answer is yes, you can use EBT cards to buy gingerbread house kits, but only if they’re sold as food at the store you’re buying them from.
If something is coded as a seasonal item, it won’t be eligible, so you should stay away from craft stores that aren’t set up to sell groceries.
Grocery stores and stores like Walmart and Target that have grocery sections should be fine though, just make sure to check if you’re not sure!