1 Cent - Safeway Stores Dallas, Texas

Safeway's Dallas Division issued fractional cent scrip during the mid-1970s as a practical response to a specific retail problem: Texas's food exemption laws meant grocery purchases often generated odd-cent change that couldn't be efficiently handled without low-denomination paper. Rather than round transactions or absorb losses, several regional grocery chains simply printed their own.

Redeemable only at Dallas-area Safeway locations, these notes had no value outside the issuing stores — a deliberate constraint that also functioned as a customer retention mechanism. The 1975–1978 date range corresponds to a period of significant price volatility, when fractional change appeared on receipts far more frequently than in stable markets.