Traverse City bakery rounds cash sales to fund meals for kids

Third Coast Bakery is turning the end of the penny into a small but steady source of meals in Traverse City, rounding cash purchases to the nearest nickel and sending the extra cents to Project Feed the Kids.

The setup came as the United States Mint ended general penny production after a 232-year circulating run, marking the final strike of the one-cent coin on Nov. 12, 2025, in Philadelphia. With pennies becoming harder to find, the Michigan Department of Treasury has said sellers may round cash transactions to the nearest nickel, while still calculating sales and use tax under state rules before applying any cash-rounding convention.

At Third Coast Bakery, that policy shift has become a practical way to keep money local. Customers who pay with cash will see totals rounded in small increments, and those spare cents will go directly to a special fund for Project Feed the Kids, a Traverse City nonprofit that has grown far beyond its pandemic-era beginning.

Project Feed the Kids started in 2020 with a simple idea: food for families who needed it. Five years later, the organization operates six coolers around the community and distributes about 3,000 meals each week, around the clock, with no questions asked and no qualifications needed. Over five years, it has surpassed 500,000 free meals, according to WPBN/WGTU.

That scale gives the bakery’s round-up program real weight. What would otherwise be a few cents lost in change can be redirected into meals for children and families in Grand Traverse County, adding a dependable trickle of support every time a customer pays cash. In a business with steady foot traffic, those tiny amounts can build into something useful without asking shoppers to do anything more than complete a normal purchase.

The effort also fits the kind of neighbor-to-neighbor support that has helped Project Feed the Kids grow. Tiffany McQueer has said the nonprofit began because she, Jason McQueer and their children once were a family in need. As the organization expanded, she said it became able to help other families facing the same pressure.

Community support has kept pace. In 2024, Project Feed the Kids received an $18,000 donation through the Traverse City Country Club’s Eagles for Children program, another sign of the demand for its services and the local backing behind them. Third Coast Bakery’s penny round-up now adds another layer to that support, using a national change in cash policy to help fund meals that reach families across Traverse City every day.