Restaurants say this Trump move will cost them $168M collectively, and they're begging Congress for help. Here's why consumers may soon feel the pinch

 Dr. Scott Strong, a college professor and numbers expert, recently had an eye-opening experience at White Castle when the restaurant didn’t give him the penny he was owed in his change.

“They just kept it,” he told the Kendall and Casey Show on Indiana’s 93.1 WIBC (1). In fact, Dr. Strong was apparently told that not giving customers their pennies back is now corporate policy.

By Scott’s math, if every White Castle location nationwide kept just one penny per cash transaction, the restaurant would be taking in an extra $835,000 a year. And if the practice becomes commonplace, it could result in a 3% to 5% increase in transaction costs for consumers, or even more for those who use cash regularly.

In Scott’s case, asking for the manager resulted in him going home with a shiny nickel for his troubles, but his experience is one aspect of the confusion that's hitting consumers at the cash register in the early goings of our post-penny world. The rules are now inconsistent and depend on the store, the chain, the location and possibly the cashier’s mood.

For consumers on fixed budgets, that means they’re no longer able to predict the final price of a purchase down to the cent when paying with cash.

It’s been just over a year since President Trump took to Truth Social to announce the phasing out of the one-cent piece in February 2025, stating that pennies “literally cost us more than two cents” to make (2). According to the U.S. Mint, over the past decade the cost of producing each penny has risen from 1.42 cents to 3.69 cents (3).

The U.S. Mint produced the final batch of one-cent coins on November 12, 2025, and the final penny that went into circulation was struck by U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach at a ceremonial event in Philadelphia.

But even before production of the penny came to a halt, approximately 1.3 billion pennies went into circulation in 2025, versus the more than three billion that were produced the year prior. While no new pennies are being manufactured, the existing supply in circulation is estimated to be approximately 300 billion as of late 2025, “far exceeding the amount needed for commerce,” according to the U.S. Mint (4).

Pennies getting pinched

According to a November 2025 survey conducted by the Retail Industry Leaders Association, retail locations in the thousands are facing a penny shortage nationwide (5). In fact, nearly one quarter of the 25 retailers surveyed said that more than 1,000 of their locations were completely out of pennies. By mid-November, more than 100 of the 165 coin distribution sites across the country had run dry of pennies.

When pennies are not available, two-thirds of survey respondents said they had taken to rounding transactions to the closest nickel to the benefit of consumers. And it’s this practice — which is likely multiplied over thousands of transactions and thousands of retail locations across the country — that could end up costing businesses a pretty penny.

The National Restaurant Association estimates that rounding down could collectively cost restaurants up to $14 million per month, or up to an estimated $168 million per year, citing the fact that one in four meals are paid for in cash (6).

According to a December statement from the association (7), the inability to provide exact change “creates friction at checkout, frustrating customers,” said Michelle Korsmo, president & CEO of the National Restaurant Association. “In a highly competitive industry, like restaurants, any change to the hospitality our customers expect could mean a lost return sale for an operator.”

In the absence of national guidelines from congress, Jeff Lenard — vice president of media and strategic communications at the National Association of Convenience Stores — says retailers are left with “three bad options”: rounding down and taking the hit, rounding up and risking fines in jurisdictions that require exact change or leaning on card payments, which incur fees (8).