1 Cent - Food Carnival New York, New York

Food Carnival was a small chain of supermarkets operating primarily in New York City's outer boroughs, catering heavily to immigrant communities in neighborhoods where Spanish-language signage was standard. Supermarket scrip of this kind — issued in fractional cent denominations to avoid giving coin change — was a common workaround in American retail during periods when small-denomination coinage was either hoarded or simply inconvenient to handle in high-volume checkout lines.

The legal status of such scrip was perpetually ambiguous under U.S. law, tolerated in practice rather than formally sanctioned.