Langley store has no cents

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Find a penny, pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck. But just don’t bring it to the Star Store.

The downtown Langley grocery store is no longer accepting or giving out pennies as change. Instead, checkers will now round your total down – provided your payment is in cash.

“If your bill comes out to $1.99, you pay $1.95,” Gene Felton, owner of the Star Store, said.

Felton went on to explain that spending time to count rolls of pennies, especially when cashiers are closing their registers up for the night, doesn’t make much sense.

“It wasn’t all just an economic thing, but it was just trying to streamline the business a little bit,” he said.

Less change won’t have much impact on the business Felton co-owns with his wife Tamar. It also means the Star Store is ahead of the curve, since the U.S. Treasury Department plans to discontinue the one-cent coin beginning in 2026.

Felton himself isn’t a big fan of change, often looking for a donation box to drop it into. He acknowledged, however, that he’s fortunate to not have to pinch pennies, and others may not be in that situation.

Upwards of 80% of the grocery store’s customers pay with card or EBT, Felton reported, with some exceptions – such as in the case of big sales on Saturdays where people are wont to pay with $100 bills rather than other forms of payment.

But with the new change away from pennies, Felton doesn’t expect anybody to switch their payment form overnight. Although if they do use cash, they’ll save a few cents here and there.