1 Cent - Lakewood Foods Chicago, Illinois

Lakewood Foods was a Chicago-based grocery operation that issued its own paper scrip — a practice that survived well into the mid-twentieth century among American retailers, particularly in company-town arrangements and employee commissary systems where controlling the medium of exchange offered a practical advantage over cash payroll. This cent denomination would have functioned as fractional change currency, filling the gap left by the chronic small-coin shortages that periodically plagued retail trade.

No federal prohibition existed against private merchant scrip of this type, provided it did not imitate official U.S. currency — a line grocery issuers were careful not to cross.