By COLlive reporter
Customers shopping at Empire Kosher Supermarket in Crown Heights will soon see a slight adjustment at checkout.
In a notice posted in the store, Empire Kosher announced that beginning February 17, 2026, cash transactions will be rounded to the nearest five cents due to the ongoing national coin shortage.
Under the new policy, final cash totals will be rounded to the nearest $0.05. Totals ending in .01, .02, .06, or .07 will be rounded down, while totals ending in .03, .04, .08, or .09 will be rounded up.
Payments made by credit card or other digital methods will continue to be charged to the exact cent, with no rounding.
Shoppers who prefer exact pricing are encouraged to utilize digital payment methods or provide their own coins whenever possible.
The change comes amid ongoing coin circulation challenges across the United States. Limited availability of certain denominations has prompted some retailers to temporarily round cash transactions to the nearest nickel, while digital payments remain precise.
Empire Kosher said the adjustment is intended to help manage small-change shortages efficiently while keeping checkout lines moving smoothly.
Why not just price everything in full/ or half dollar amounts?
It’s pretty hard to re-price the entire store and if you’re buying a few items, that are sold by weight like vegetables or meat or chicken you can’t exactly do that
Buy pennies from ebay
I don’t really have an issue with this. But I am wondering if it’s really legal to charge people extra like that.
They’ve been doing it in Israel for years.
Not that it makes it right
Gambling
Absolutely legal
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/penny-production-cessation-faqs
Why not round everything down! They make so much money they can round it down 3 cents
Don’t be so quick to judge, groceries have notoriously small margins.
Isn’t the reason because the mint stopped producing pennies?
If you can pay with pennies then there is no need to round up?
Why not use the gold standard, 0-4 round down, 5-9 round up
There’s a 5c coin…
It’s based on every 5 cents. Took me a second to understand. 6 and 7 normally round up, but here it’s different. 6 and 7 are closer to 5, so round down to the 5 cent mark.
Because they are rounding to the nearest 5 cents, not the nearest 10
that would be rounding to the nearest 10. Here they’re rounding to the nearest 5.
It’s the same idea but it’s being g rounded to the closest 5 cents not 10 cents
0-5¢ go down and 6¢+ go up?
Since there are still nickels, prices will end in 5. So if something is .34, they want to round that up to .35, not down to .30. Same with .36 – it’s closer to .35 than to .40.
I used to use the change to give my kids to bring to school for Tzedaka, but now it’s becoming more challenging…
Is rounding up halachacly permissible. Wouldn’t that fall into interest? Really not allowed to pay somebody more than what you owe them so I’m just curious
It’s been like this in Canada for years
Why don’t you just change your prices!! Instead of .99 charge either .95 or 1.00.
It won’t help
Because items by lb. Like Produce, meat, etc will still be difficult.
tax in nyc is 8.875 and totel of does item’s will still not round to a nickel automatically
We haven’t had Pennies for quite a few years now. Anything under 5 cents is rounded down and 5 cents are over is rounded up
The store is giving reasonable notice, and the plan sounds fair. It’s much better than my experience at a restuarant in Philadelphia. They just decided not to give any change in coins. When I asked where my 50 cent change was for a $5.50 beer and paid with a ten, the waitress and then the manager said, “We don’t deal in change.” I never went back, but if I had, I would have paid for a beer with a five and when they asked for full payment, I would have said, “Oh, I don’t deal in change.”
all shuls and schools have tons of pennies and change to get rid of
post a contact info will give you tons of change
The article summary is misleading. They are not rounding everything UP. They are ROUNDING it to the nearest five cents, UP OR DOWN, depending what the total is.
A far more pressing issue is how tight and cramped the store is relative to the size of the community. As crown height’s only major affordable supermarket it’s a real problem that you have to face absolute insane crowding every time you walk in there, especially towards the end of the week. I see mothers with strollers and elderly people trying to navigate gridlocked shopping carts and workers unloading products. It’s not ok that in order to avoid the insane crowds you need to pay huge markups to shop at marketplace which so many people can’t afford. And before people… Read more »
“it’s not ok” and “the responsible thing” and “it’s just a shame”… seem inappropriate terms to use here. while it might be true that the store is tight, and prices are challenging for some people, this store, or any store is not a community, government or charity enterprise. it’s business. and based on cost and real estate and margins and expenses. anyone is free to open a huge store and charge below cost…
Just see the first line. They are rounding to the nearest nickel. Therefore .01, .02 go down to .00. For the next ones 3 and 4 get rounded up to 5. 6 and 7 get rounded down to 5. 8 and 9 go up to 10.
There is NO coin shortage in Canada but they eliminated the penny.
So rounding has been going on for years.
I just use my credit card.
The rounding up to me looks like stealing as it doesnt follow the standard.
What does halacha say?
If rounding it should be the accepted standard.
Less than 5 round down. Over 5 round up
According to Halacha as long as they communicate their terms and you accept those terms (which you do by still agreeing to buy from them) they are allowed to do it.
halacha might say bring exact change. and if the store tells you before hand this is the policy, then they have effectively told you their pricing for everything in the store
If the bill is $10.04 we could pay $10:00 by cash and write a check for 4 cents so we won’t be scammed by empire kosher
If they continue to scam the community we can take our business to KRM in Boro park for free delivery and better prices
Soon they
will round out all transactions to the highest dollar and then to the next 10 dollar amount.