MARK BRODIE: If you've got some spare change lying around or filling up your piggy bank, there are companies that would like to get their hands on it. There is a bit of a coin shortage in this country due to the coronavirus pandemic, and there are a few reasons for that. As states shut down parts of their economies, people weren't out and about spending money and circulating coins, for one. Also, the U.S. Mint wasn't producing as many coins as it was before COVID, and many bank lobbies were people redeemed their coins have been closed. So that's led some companies to take different approaches to add change to their registers. Mike Thornbrugh is manager of public and government affairs for the QuikTrip Corporation. He joins me to talk more about this. And Mike, what have your store has been seeing in terms of coins?
MIKE THORNBRUGH: Well, it really kind of varies by market, to be very blunt with you. I mean, each market can have unique difficulties or opportunities, if you will. And really, I mean, how this thing all started, Mark, was we saw a press release by the chairman of the Federal Reserve warning everybody that there could be a coin shortage. So because of that, they start allocating, you know, the financial institutions, coins. Therefore, they began to allocate us. So it really kind of moves from day to day and from market to market, if you will.
BRODIE: Are there particular markets in which your stores have had problems, have not had enough coins to make change or do what they need to do?
THORNBRUGH: It's a little more unique than that. It's not necessarily each market. I mean, clearly, you have some stores that are more credit card-oriented than some of our other stores. And then conversely, you have a lot of stores that are kind of cash bases. So those are ones that are really running thin on coins. And we've had to do a lot of different things, you know, to try to make sure that we can take care of our customer.
BRODIE: What kinds of things have you had to do in those particular stores where you haven't had enough coins to make change?
THORNBRUGH: Well, what we did is, I mean, we, we tried to be proactive, number one. About three weeks ago, we put signage in all of our stores trying to inform and educate our customer that there could be problems. And we listed solutions on how they could help us get through this. I mean, number one is if you have the correct change, clearly we would appreciate it. Two is if you have to use a credit card or debit card, we understand, and if you could do that, we'd appreciate it. But then we went old school. Clearly, everybody's got coins if you're like me lying around somewhere in your car, on top of your dresser, you know, check your sofa cushions and places like that. There's a lot of coins that are lying around. And if you have the opportunity to bring them in, we'll redeem those. And it's really been amazing, the customers that have come in and redeemed their coins with us. So that's been very helpful. But we've also taken some other steps. Is if none of those situations work, you know, QuikTrip will do another three things: Number one, if we don't have the correct change that we owe you, we can print out a receipt with a bar code on it that shows the amount that we owe you that you can use for your next purchase or we can give you a QuikTrip gift card that has that amount on there as well for your next purchase. Or trying to make a bad situation positive. If a customer will allow us to round up whatever that purchase is, we will donate that to a charity that we're very active in called Folds of Honor. So we're trying to be creative and come up with solutions to make sure we take care of the customer.
BRODIE: I would imagine that this situation is not unique to QuikTrip. Have you heard from colleagues in other businesses or other maybe even sectors that have had similar problems?
THORNBRUGH: No, you're right. Nobody's immune from it. If you're a retailer and you accept currency and coins, you know you're gonna be subject to it. I do think, though, that it probably has more an effect upon a convenience store industry for the simple reason is, you know, a lot of purchases that we have by the customer is for a single item. You know, it may be a, a cup of coffee, a fountain drink or something like that. And those normally are cash transaction or coin transactions versus a lot of some of the other businesses where the ticket price is much higher and people use their credit cards. So it's, I don't want to use the word 'scrambling' because we're not because we have a plan in place, but it's, it's something that we wish didn't happen. It is what it is. We're trying to make the very best of it.
BRODIE: So you mentioned that some customers have actually been redeeming coins. Like are they using QuikTrip, kind of like Coinstar or something where they'd bring in like a bucket of pennies and nickels and stuff and they get something back from you?
THORNBRUGH: Yeah. The difference is Coinstar, you know, they keep 10% of it, right? We don't. When we're paying you, you bring us 100 pennies, you know, we're gonna pay the dollar amount. And it has been amazing that a lot of people are coming in and they're helping out. For instance, to give an example, we had one individual in Wichita, Kansas that called us and he had over $3,000 worth of coins.
BRODIE: Wow.
THORNBRUGH: Clearly, we had to get with our people to make sure we had that kind of money. But those are the kinds of things that you're seeing. People are just coming in and redeeming coins and helping us out. And to sit — at the same time, they want to walk around with that much coin. So we're both helping each other, quite frankly.
BRODIE: So what are you hearing from folks either at the banks with which you work or maybe from the Fed. in terms of trying to get more coins into circulation so this problem abates somewhat?
THORNBRUGH: I don't, I can't say the Fed's offense. I mean, they're obviously, they're going to do what they can do by getting more production the best that they can. But then you run into logistics. The banks are really having the same problem as we are, and we're working with them very closely, and they're doing the very best that they can of getting these coins recirculated right back into the marketplace. A lot of them, depending, again, on where you operate, they're back open. Their lobbies are open. So their coin redemption machines are running, I'm sure, around the clock.
BRODIE: Is this something that you have ever seen before? Like, have you been in this kind of situation before?
THORNBRUGH: No. I mean, I've been with QuikTrip almost 26 years and I've never seen anything like this before. And I don't think that as we were all going through, you know, dealing with COVID, that anybody thought about there could be a potential coin shortage. So it's another unfortunate byproduct. But this is one that everybody, if we work together, we can fix. So hopefully it's short-lived. We really haven't had that many problems. But you will from time to time, have some places, you know, that will be short or they'll be out of certain coins of a certain denomination.
BRODIE: All right. That is Mike Thornbrugh. He's manager of public and government affairs with QuikTrip Corporation. Mike, nice to talk to you. Thank you,.
THORNBRUGH: Mark, I really appreciate it very much.
