8 Festival Foods Policies Wisconsinites Only Learn About at the Register
Festival Foods says it’s shutting off its Gas Rewards program on October 11, 2026.
The points sitting in thousands of Wisconsin accounts will stop earning that same week.
These are the Festival Foods policies Wisconsinites sometimes only learn about at the register.
Note: This is general information, not tax or legal advice. Store policies change, and tax rules are subject to change too, so confirm current tax details with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
1. Penny-Rounding Rule
Festival Foods stopped handing out pennies as change once the U.S. Treasury cut off new penny production.
At the register, every cash total now rounds down to the nearest nickel.
Every other payment method, debit, credit, Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), or mobile, still charges the exact total.
The pennies don’t come back.
Festival Foods rounds a cash refund or a Coinstar voucher up instead, always in the shopper’s favor.
2. No-Receipt Returns
A Festival Foods return without a receipt still gets an item off a shopper’s hands, just not for cash.
A shopper only finds this out at the register, when the return doesn’t ring up as cash at all.
Without a receipt, the refund goes onto a Festival Foods Gift Card at the current retail price, never to a card or in cash.
Store credit only.
With a receipt in hand, Festival Foods sends the refund back to the same payment method, or hands over cash when a card isn’t available.
Festival Foods’ return policy also requires a valid ID on any no-receipt return over $50.
3. 30-Day Receipt Clock
At every Festival Foods register, a receipt only counts as good for a return within 30 days of the purchase date.
After that, it’s gone.
The payment method and purchase date both have to stay legible on the paper for the register to accept it.
A faded, gas-station-quality receipt can fail even inside the 30-day window.
A shopper who tosses the paper copy can still request a reprint from Festival Foods up to 90 days after buying something.
Festival Foods can look it up by the receipt’s Universal Product Code (UPC), the card number, the total, or a Gas Rewards account number.
4. Items Never Refunded
A short list of items never comes back as a refund at Festival Foods, receipt or no receipt.
That list covers alcohol, tobacco, gift cards, lottery tickets, stamps and postal items, trading cards, and anything bought at the Service Desk.
None of it comes back.
A shopper who grabs the wrong six-pack or the wrong scratch ticket owns it the moment the register prints the receipt.
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Quiz
Wisconsin Cheese & Dairy IQ
Answer these questions on Wisconsin’s cheese and dairy history. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
A Green Bay Packers fan cut up a couch cushion to make the first foam cheesehead hat. What year did he do it?
5. eWIC Exchange Rule
An eWIC purchase at Festival Foods gets a different rule than every other kind of return.
eWIC is the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program's electronic benefit card.
Bring back an item bought with eWIC benefits, and the only fix Festival Foods offers is an even exchange for the identical product.
No cash back, ever.
WIC participants find this out the moment they try to swap a formula can for a different size, and Festival Foods calls it an exchange, not a refund.
6. Coupon-Stacking Limits
Festival Foods caps how many coupons can hit a single item at checkout.
One manufacturer coupon, whether paper or digital, one store or ad coupon, and one mobile-text offer can all combine on the same product.
Festival Foods gives no cash back when a coupon is worth more than the item it applies to.
The math stops at zero.
Festival Foods also limits Digital Coupons per guest to once per visit, and splitting one order into two transactions to get around that doesn't work either.
7. Gas Rewards' Expiration Clock
Scanning a Gas Rewards card at the Festival Foods checkout adds points on a formula many shoppers never bother to work out.
Every dollar spent at Festival Foods earns one point, and every 10 points shaves a penny off a gallon of Kwik Trip gas.
Shoppers earn points on beer, wine, and spirits too, a perk many loyalty programs skip.
Those points expire 30 days after they post, whether a shopper cashes them in or not.
They disappear fast.
A shopper who scans that same card at checkout after October 11, 2026, adds nothing new, no matter how much lands in the cart.
Redemption at Kwik Trip closes a month later, on November 11, 2026.
A new Festival Rewards program takes its place this fall.
Current Gas Rewards members have to set up a brand-new account to use it.
8. Candy Tax Line
Wisconsin doesn't tax groceries at the register, but Festival Foods still has to charge sales tax on a few categories.
The state's exemption stops at candy, soft drinks, dietary supplements, and prepared food, all of which ring up with tax added.
Not automatically, though.
Wisconsin's tax code carves out anything containing flour, or anything that needs refrigeration, from the legal definition of candy.
A cookie-based treat can ring up tax-free at Festival Foods' registers, while a plain sugar candy sitting right next to it still carries the tax.
The Flour Test Rule
What Wisconsin's Flour Test Covers
Wisconsin's flour test decides a food's tax status at every Festival Foods register in the state.
The rule comes from a multi-state sales tax agreement that more than twenty states, including Wisconsin, use to define candy the same way.
Not one chain's idea.
Wisconsin's rule looks only at what's inside the wrapper, not at the marketing on the label.
Something sold right next to the candy aisle can still land in the tax-exempt column if its ingredient list has flour in it.
One State, Every Store
Every Festival Foods location still sits inside Wisconsin's borders.
The chain has grown to 42 stores without ever crossing a state line, all under one family's ownership since 1946.
Same family, same state.
Dave's son Mark joined the company full-time in 1992 and has led much of its growth since, still without opening a single store outside Wisconsin.
Dave Skogen and his wife Barb, along with his brothers Gary and Tom, took over the business after Paul Skogen's death in 1976.
The first store to carry the Festival Foods name opened in Onalaska in 1990, and every location since has stayed within Wisconsin's borders.
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New residents find out the hard way that a rulebook nobody hands them at closing decides what's open and what waits until Monday.
