Giant Eagle gives shoppers more than $2M in gift cards in exchange for pennies

Shoppers put their pennies to good use on Saturday during a one-day event at Giant Eagles across the area.

Giant Eagle invited people to bring in their pennies, which would then be exchanged for a gift card worth twice the value of the pennies exchanged.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE >>> Have spare pennies? Giant Eagle will take them in exchange for gift cards worth double

Giant Eagle President and CEO Bill Artman gave this statement afterward:

“Today, our customers and team members came together to do something special. In a matter of hours, we received more than 100 million pennies across our 200 Giant Eagle and Market District supermarkets. This number is nothing short of amazing.

“This incredible experience will ensure we can provide exact change to customers for months to come. But more importantly, it resulted in more than $2 million in Giant Eagle gift cards being awarded to our customers at such an incredibly important time for our communities.”

Lines on Saturday got so long that some customers, like Jeff Jaillet, decided to swap out their pennies at Coinstar machines instead.

“Just to be honest, I expected it to be bad, and it was worse than I thought,” Jaillet said. “I’m kind of an impatient person, so we’re going to do this and move on.”

Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW