Local businesses beginning to feel pinch from coin shortage
Starkville businesses do not seem to be feeling a great impact from a federal coin shortage just yet.
Two Starkville businesses said the shortage was more of an annoyance than anything else, with both still allowing customers to pay in cash and not requiring them to use credit or debit cards or correct change. The shortage was announced in a news release from the Federal Reserve on June 11, which stated that due to a significant decline in coin deposits, The Fed would temporarily allocate coin deliveries based on historical order volume by coin denomination and endpoint. The new system began on June 15.
Moe’s Original BBQ Owner/ Operator Whit Stuckey said at this point the issue was more of an annoyance to his business than anything else.
“Fortunately we’ve got some personal change that we’ve been able to roll up and use, so we haven’t really had a problem with it yet,” Stuckey said. “Hopefully, that will kind of get us through until they get it figured out.”
He said his business began seeing the issues approximately two weeks ago.
“Our normal operation is: go to the bank, get the change, you know, we do that a couple of times a week,” Stuckey said. “You wait in line at the (bank) drive through for about an hour and a half, and sometimes they’re short on the change. It’s been a little bit of a struggle, but now we’re just going to kind of use our own rolled-up change until it works itself out.”
He said at this point the impact Moe’s was feeling from the shortage was not significant.
Vowell’s Marketplace bookkeeper Condra Gandy said the store was beginning to feel some impact, but was able to mitigate it through other means. She said dimes had been the most difficult to come by.
“Running out of dimes is a problem,” Gandy said. “I have to pull out the drink machine money in order to give them coins out of the machine, handcount it and roll it.”
She said the Starkville Vowell’s had not yet posted signs asking for non-cash forms of payment in the Starkville store.
“Right now, whatever the bank can give us is greatly appreciated, but we’re OK for right now,” Gandy said.
In the June 11 press release, the Federal Reserve said it was working to mitigate the shortage. Some of the steps the agency is taking include managing allocation of existing inventories and working with the U.S. Mint to minimize supply constraints and maximize production.