The national coin shortage is forcing businesses to get creative. One Chick-fil-A location needs coins so badly it’s giving away food.
The store is offering customers a $10 bill and a coupon for a free entree in exchange for every $10 in coins they bring in.
“Help prevent (Chick-fil-A) from going cashless,” the Chick-fil-A restaurant, located near Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, said in a Facebook post on July 25.
The promotion is fairly limited. It’s being offered from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Wednesday though the store said in a comment on the post that it anticipates offering the promotion again. Customers can receive up to 10 coupons per person.
Another Chick-fil-A location in Huntsville, Alabama, offered a similar promotion last week.
It is not, however, a nationwide offer, as each Chick-fil-A restaurant is individually owned and operated, the company said in a statement to CNN Business.
Still, it’s a sign of just how much businesses are struggling to fill their cash registers with coins.
Elsewhere in the country, retailers including Wawa and CVS have warned that customers may not be able to receive coins as change if they pay with cash. A Wisconsin bank launched a Coin Buy Back Program to pay people for their spare coins.
The Federal Reserve has said that the pandemic interrupted the normal flow of coins through the economy—with so many people staying home, shopping online, and avoiding touching physical currency—causing the coin shortage.
Last week, the U.S. Mint asked Americans to help out with the issue by spending their coins or returning them to coin collection kiosks.
“The coin supply problem can be solved with each of us doing our part,” the Mint said in a release.
