1 Cent - Wayco Foods Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Wayco Foods was a Chicago-area food service and vending company operating in the industrial corridors of Cook County during the early 1970s. This cent-denomination scrip belongs to a category of privately issued trade tokens and coupons used by employers and cafeteria operators to manage small-value transactions at on-site facilities — a practical workaround for the perpetual shortage of low-denomination coinage that plagued vending and food service operations throughout that decade.

Elk Grove Village, incorporated only in 1956, had by the early 1970s become one of the most densely developed industrial park zones in the United States. Company scrip of this kind rarely survived the cashier's drawer.