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Jen Barnett is co-owner at Freshfully, Avondale's local food grocery market. Freshfully recently began accepting bitcoins.

(Alex Walsh | Alabama Media Group)

It's official: you can now use bitcoins to buy groceries in Birmingham.

Jen Barnett, co-owner of Freshfully in Birmingham's Avondale neighborhood, recently integrated the bitcoin payment system into her grocery store's processing set-up. Customers with bitcoins can now buy local Alabama tomatoes, for example, with the internet's hottest new currency.

Barnett answered a few questions about her experiences with incorporating the internet's newest payment tech into her own small business.

AL.com: Why did you decide to start accepting bitcoins?

Barnett: Someone on Reddit suggested it to me, and so I decided to see how difficult it would be and the answer was not very, so I did it. Any time you can open up your products to new markets, why not?

Q: Not very difficult, you say? Can you explain further?

It wasn't difficult at all. It's very similar to PayPal. I used a website called Coinbase to set up an account. When customers make a purchase, they use a coupon code called BITCOIN that will let them check out for no money and then I send them a payment request through bitcoin. And if they don't pay, I don't make the shipment. In store it'd have to be a live transaction.

Q: On Twitter, you mentioned that someone had tried to pay with bitcoins already this week! What happened?

Actually, it was a customer who was confused. They came back and paid with a credit card eventually. But it wasn't any risk for me so it was fine.

Q: Do you own any bitcoins yourself?

Not yet.