1 Cent - Foodtown Manville Manville, New Jersey

Foodtown Manville was an independent supermarket operating under the Foodtown cooperative banner, a buyer's group that allowed small grocery retailers across the northeastern United States to compete with chain stores. These cent-denomination paper scrip tokens were issued as change-making instruments — a practical workaround for the chronic U.S. coin shortage that had plagued retail since the mid-1960s and pushed many small merchants toward proprietary paper fractional currency well into the 1970s.

Square format was not unusual for this class of merchant scrip; it helped distinguish the pieces from federal currency at a glance and simplified die cutting.