Penny Promotion

The Federal Reserve stopped producing pennies in 2025, as production costs far exceeded the face value of the coin.  In addition, with the increasing use of non-cash transactions, resulting in less use of the penny, the continued production of the penny no longer made economic sense.  Issued pennies continue to be legal tender.  

As there is no universal consensus on what approach businesses will take as the penny becomes more scarce, at this time, Care & Share is not modifying our approach to sales.  Keep in mind that even if we were to change prices to end in a “5” or a “0”, sales tax would create transaction totals requiring cents.

As our bank no longer provides pennies to its business customers, we began a promotion in December 2025, which allowed individuals to bring us rolled pennies and exchange them for Care & Share gift cards.  The best part – they could double their spending power!  For each $5.00 of rolled coins, they received a $10 gift card.  We continued this promotion through the end of January 2026.

We collected a total of 1,108 rolls of pennies!  Many customers, and some volunteers, happily exchanged their coin surplus with us for the ability to get a gift card.  As a fun fact, we have collected over 300 pounds of pennies!!

This promotion has ended, and we will now measure how long the cache of pennies we collected will last.  We continue to ask our team members who work the registers to encourage customers to provide you pennies in settling their transaction, to minimize the number of pennies that we need to put back into public circulation.  For example, if a customer’s transaction is $10.78, and they are paying in cash, ask them if they have the three pennies.  If they give you $15.03, enter that in cash tender, and they will get back $4.25. Many customers are happy to provide change in paying their bill if asked.

Thanks for your assistance in promoting this Penny Opportunity to the public and making it a success!