By Gene Galin
Pittsboro, NC — Over fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, a lamb burger and an order of Irish egg rolls at Doherty’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, a casual lunch conversation among the “3 Guys from Pittsboro” having lunch” and Lyle Estill developed into an unexpected proposal: Bring back PLENTY, a community currency that once attracted national attention while encouraging residents to spend their money with locally owned businesses.
During our July 12 edition of the “3 Guys from Pittsboro having lunch” with Eric Andrews, Greg Stafford and me, Lyle Estill argued that reviving the currency could do more than circulate money through the local economy. He suggested that the project could give residents with different political and cultural views a common cause at a time when rapid growth, online conflict and ideological divisions are reshaping Pittsboro.
“I’m thinking that the tribalism in this town doesn’t serve us,” Estill said. “I think we should have a truce. And I think there’s a way to jack this town. And I think it’s the PLENTY.”
The proposal was not presented as a completed business plan, and no formal organization, merchant network or launch date was announced. Instead, the lunch became an exploratory discussion about whether an idea attempted twice before could succeed in a town that is larger, more digitally connected and economically different from the Pittsboro of 2009.
The conversation also exposed the challenges that would confront any revival: declining cash use, merchant participation, currency redemption, administrative responsibility, tax compliance, public trust and the lingering question of whether a local economic program can remain separate from political conflict.
A currency built to remain close to home
PLENTY stands for Piedmont Local Economy Tender. It was designed as a complementary currency — a privately organized medium of exchange that circulates alongside, rather than replaces, the U.S. dollar.
Residents could acquire PLENTYs and spend them at participating businesses. Those merchants, in turn, could use the notes with other participating businesses or exchange them for conventional dollars through a participating financial institution.
The concept was based on a straightforward economic argument: Money spent at locally owned businesses has more opportunities to circulate through the community before leaving it.
A restaurant owner might use locally earned revenue to hire a Pittsboro bookkeeper. The bookkeeper might spend part of the payment at a neighborhood grocery store. The grocery store might purchase produce from a Chatham County farmer, who might use the proceeds to buy supplies, hire workers or eat at the restaurant where the cycle began.
A community currency seeks to reinforce those local trading relationships by limiting where the currency can be spent.
“It’s about circulation, or about how many times that dollar or PLENTY goes around town,” Estill explained during the currency’s 2009 revival. He argued that because PLENTYs could not easily be spent outside the area, they encouraged people to consider local suppliers, merchants and service providers before sending money elsewhere.
PLENTY’s original slogan — “In Each Other We Trust” — summarized the project’s economic and social ambitions. Its value depended not upon mandatory acceptance but upon voluntary confidence among residents, businesses and the institution responsible for exchanging it.
That distinction remains important. A community currency is not legal tender that every business must accept. It functions only when buyers, sellers and administrators agree on its value and rules.
The first experiment began in Carrboro
The first version of PLENTY emerged in Carrboro around 2001. Its initial structure, however, proved difficult to sustain.
Under that system, one PLENTY was valued at approximately $10. Organizers also issued fractional notes, including half- and quarter-PLENTYs. Weaver Street Market became a major participant, but the currency did not circulate broadly enough among other businesses.
As customers spent their notes at the market, Weaver Street accumulated more PLENTYs than it could use. Without a dependable mechanism for exchanging them for conventional dollars, the market effectively became the end of the circulation chain.
The experience demonstrated a structural weakness found in many community-currency projects: A successful system needs more than consumers who are willing to spend. It needs merchants who can spend the currency again.
A grocer may accept local notes from customers, but the notes have little practical value if the grocer’s distributors, landlords, insurers and utility providers will not accept them. The merchant can eventually become trapped with a growing stack of currency and a shrinking list of places to use it.
“The only circulatory point” in the early system was Weaver Street Market, Estill said during our conversation. “You couldn’t exchange in, and you couldn’t exchange out.”
The original Carrboro version gradually faded after the currency accumulated at a limited number of participating businesses. The absence of simple convertibility and the unusual denomination system also made the notes inconvenient for consumers.
For Estill, the lesson was not that local currency was inherently unworkable. The lesson was that a currency needed a stronger circulatory system.
Pittsboro gives PLENTY a second life
Estill and a group of volunteers revived the concept in Pittsboro during the economic uncertainty of 2008 and 2009.
The organizers created a governing board, commissioned new artwork and printed notes in familiar denominations of one, five, 10, 20 and 50. Unlike the earlier Carrboro version, the new bills were designed to correspond directly with dollar denominations.
The decisive change was the participation of Capital Bank’s Pittsboro branch.
The bank agreed to exchange PLENTYs and U.S. dollars, reducing the risk that a business would become stuck with notes it could not use. Contemporary reports differ on the exact exchange terms. Some described direct, fee-free conversion, while another reported that consumers could receive one PLENTY for 90 cents, creating an incentive to spend locally.
The reports agree on the larger point: Bank participation gave the currency a dependable entrance and exit.
“The idea that you can trade your PLENTYs in for a Federal Reserve Note at a bank solves the circulatory problem,” Estill said in 2009. “You can’t get stuck with them anymore.”
Businesses including Chatham Marketplace, restaurants, retailers and local service providers agreed to accept the notes. Residents could use PLENTYs for groceries, meals, fuel, internet service and other purchases. Chatham Marketplace reportedly used the notes for employee bonuses, further encouraging their circulation.
The project’s arrival during the Great Recession strengthened its news appeal. Communities across the country were looking for ways to support small businesses, maintain commerce and respond to the instability of the national economy.
Pittsboro’s experiment attracted coverage from ABC11, WRAL, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Democracy Now! and international publications. A 2013 Our State magazine article described journalists coming to Pittsboro to examine the unusual currency and the community surrounding it.
During our Doherty’s lunch, Estill recalled being awakened from a nap by a telephone call from USA Today after the story began receiving national attention.
“I was basically thinking nothing about this,” he said. “Then the next thing, it blew up.”
A promotional tool as well as an economic one
Estill’s new argument is not limited to the amount of money that would circulate.
He believes a revived PLENTY could function as a destination-marketing tool, attracting visitors who are curious about a town with its own currency.
“The point is to bring back attention to Pittsboro,” Estill said. He claimed that even if the total value in circulation remained relatively small, the novelty could encourage visitors to come downtown, acquire the bills and spend them with participating merchants. The artwork, slogans and geographic restrictions can reinforce local identity. Carrying the currency becomes a visible declaration that a consumer wants to support participating businesses.
Researchers nevertheless caution against assuming that symbolism automatically produces large economic gains. An empirical study of BerkShares, a prominent community currency in Massachusetts, examined business creation, unemployment and income. The research illustrates the difficulty of establishing broad causal economic effects from a program whose usage represents only a small portion of total regional spending.
PLENTY would not prevent residents from shopping online, visiting national retailers or using conventional payment cards. Its realistic role would be narrower: prompting consumers to redirect some purchases to businesses in the participating network.
The measure of success would therefore depend on the project’s stated purpose. A currency designed to generate publicity and strengthen merchant relationships would be evaluated differently from one promoted as a major solution to regional economic problems.
Estill offers to become the exchange point
The most concrete proposal came when Estill said Fair Game Beverage Company at The Plant could serve as the new exchange location.
“You give me PLENTYs, I give you your Federal Reserve notes,” he said. “You give me Federal Reserve notes, I give you PLENTYs.”
The offer addressed the same convertibility problem that undermined the Carrboro experiment.
The Plant, located on Lorax Lane east of downtown Pittsboro, is now a 17-acre eco-industrial and entertainment campus containing beverage producers, restaurants, artists, retailers and other locally owned enterprises. Estill and Tami Schwerin are listed as its co-founders. The grounds are open seven days a week, although individual businesses maintain their own operating hours.
That mix of businesses could make The Plant a potential circulation hub. Visitors might exchange dollars for PLENTYs at Fair Game and then spend the notes at other participating establishments on the property or elsewhere in Pittsboro.
Yet Estill’s offer would be only the beginning of the administrative work.
A credible exchange would need written rules addressing how many notes could be issued, what assets would back them, where reserve funds would be held, how damaged or counterfeit bills would be handled and what would happen if the organization ended operations.
It would also need bookkeeping procedures capable of documenting exchanges and merchant redemptions.
Historical reporting described PLENTY transactions as taxable. Current Internal Revenue Service guidance states that the fair market value of goods or services received through bartering generally must be included in gross income. Businesses considering participation would therefore need qualified legal and tax advice rather than treating local notes as off-the-books transactions.
Cash creates nostalgia — and a practical problem
Our lunch discussion quickly reached one of the greatest differences between 2009 and 2026: Consumers increasingly expect to pay electronically.
“PLENTY has to do, though, because nobody carries cash anymore,” Greg Stafford said. “Can we do a PLENTY cyber currency?”
Estill acknowledged the problem while expressing a preference for a physical note.
“It’s over for cash, and all I know anything about is cash,” he said. “I don’t know how to go crypto.”
I noted that “anyone knows how to help Lyle out with crypto? Give him a buzz.”
The claim that no one uses cash is an exaggeration, but the overall shift is real. Federal Reserve research has found a continuing decline in cash and check payments as cards, mobile devices and remote transactions gain ground. More than three-quarters of U.S. consumers told the Federal Reserve that they preferred credit or debit cards for in-person purchases. Cash usage, however, appears to have stabilized rather than disappeared entirely, and it remains important to some consumers, particularly for small transactions and among people with limited access to banking services.
That leaves Lyle with a strategic choice.
A paper-only system would offer collectability, visual identity and the novelty that made the earlier PLENTY memorable. It would also exclude consumers who no longer carry bills and merchants accustomed to automated point-of-sale systems.
A digital system could make transactions more convenient while creating a searchable record of circulation. Digitalization would introduce new concerns, including cybersecurity, transaction fees, privacy, software maintenance, account recovery and access for residents without smartphones or bank accounts.
A hybrid system combining physical notes with a simple digital ledger might preserve PLENTY’s identity while accommodating modern payment habits. Such a system would still require professional technical and legal planning.
A local digital currency would not have to be cryptocurrency
In our lunch discussion, we frequently used the terms “digital currency,” “crypto” and “cyber currency” interchangeably. They are not necessarily the same thing.
A digital PLENTY could operate through a conventional database maintained by a nonprofit or participating financial institution. Customers could pay by card, mobile application or QR code without using a public blockchain or creating a speculative cryptocurrency.
That design might more closely match PLENTY’s original purpose. The historic currency represented dollars intentionally redirected into a defined network of local businesses. Its appeal came from predictable value and local acceptance, not from the possibility that the notes would rise dramatically in price.
A cryptocurrency could introduce price volatility and encourage people to hold the tokens as investments rather than spend them. A currency that is constantly saved or traded outside the community would conflict with Estill’s emphasis on local circulation.
The greater challenge may be human circulation
Estill repeatedly returned to what he viewed as a deeper reason for PLENTY’s decline: Public disputes transformed an economic experiment into a cultural symbol.
He recalled an online disagreement involving a local business owner and a tip paid in PLENTY. What might have remained a disagreement over customer service or currency acceptance became, in his description, an ideological conflict.
The result was fear among participating merchants that displaying a PLENTY sign would associate them with one political faction and alienate customers from another.
“Everyone’s terrified of it because everyone’s afraid that it’s going to play a role in the culture war,” Estill said.
His description of a politically fractured town received immediate resistance from others at the table. They acknowledged that Pittsboro contains ideological disagreements but disputed the suggestion that daily relationships are defined by partisan warfare.
I argued that friendships often cross political boundaries and that local debate, including arguments on the Chatham Chatlist, does not necessarily amount to organized tribal conflict.
The exchange illustrated the complexity of Estill’s proposed truce. Community members may disagree not only about political questions but also about whether the community is deeply divided in the first place.
Our lunch itself offered evidence for both interpretations. We teased one another about politics, media, property ownership, tree removal, parking and business decisions. At times the banter became sharp, but the conversation continued over a shared meal.
For Estill, that familiarity is precisely what could make another PLENTY experiment possible.
“There’s nothing partisan about local currency,” he said.
Parking, litter and the economics of everyday behavior
Not every subject at our lunch involved grand theories of money and civic trust.
We discussed downtown employees and business owners who occupy prime customer parking spaces for much of the day. Eric said employees in his office could be fired for parking directly in front of the business.
The conversation also turned to roadside litter, including discarded fast-food containers and liquor bottles. Lyle described collecting bags of trash near his property, while Greg recalled cleaning up bottles left behind a former Pittsboro business.
Local economic health is influenced by routine decisions.
A merchant who occupies a customer parking space may unintentionally discourage a sale. A motorist who throws trash onto the roadside transfers the cleanup cost to a property owner or government agency. A consumer who chooses one business over another helps determine which establishments remain open.
Pittsboro’s current downtown-development efforts similarly emphasize business promotion, economic vitality, public gathering places and cooperation between government, property owners, merchants and volunteers. The town is also planning for the effects of large-scale development, including Chatham Park, which has approval for as many as 22,000 residential units and 22 million square feet of nonresidential development.
A revived currency would enter a town that is no longer simply the small county seat portrayed in national reports from 2009. It would have to connect the historic downtown, The Plant, newer commercial districts, longtime residents and thousands of people arriving through new development.
That larger geography could provide more customers and businesses. It could also make the intimate trust implied by “In Each Other We Trust” harder to establish.
A third PLENTY attempt would require more than enthusiasm
Our Doherty’s conversation ended with an agreement to continue exploring the idea.
No one committed to a launch date, funding level or organizational structure. Eric offered to accept PLENTYs as part of a real estate commission or property transaction. Lyle offered to operate an exchange point. Greg and I expressed support for the concept while questioning whether physical notes remained practical.
“I don’t care if it didn’t work a couple times before,” Eric said. “I’d love to see it work again. It was fun.”
Fun and publicity could help a revival attract early interest. Sustained operation would require a much more detailed plan.
Lyle and his fellow organizers would first need to define the goal. Is PLENTY primarily an advertising campaign, a merchant-loyalty program, a collectible currency, an economic-development tool or an experiment in local self-reliance?
They would need to recruit a diverse group of anchor businesses capable of both receiving and spending the currency. Grocery stores and restaurants alone cannot maintain circulation if their major expenses must be paid entirely in dollars.
A governing organization would need transparent financial controls, redemption guarantees and published rules. Merchants would need accounting guidance, employee training and compatible payment procedures. Consumers would need a current directory showing where the currency is accepted.
The project would also need a strategy for remaining broadly welcoming. A currency intended to support local commerce would be weakened if residents interpreted participation as an endorsement of a political movement.
Thousands of community-currency experiments have been attempted worldwide, but many remain small or disappear after their initial organizers lose momentum.
An old experiment for a changing Pittsboro
The most important result of our lunch may not be whether PLENTY notes return to local cash registers.
Our conversation raised a broader question about Pittsboro’s future: Can a rapidly growing town retain the personal commercial relationships and willingness to experiment that once distinguished it?
The earlier PLENTY emerged from a network that included farmers, renewable-energy advocates, shopkeepers, restaurants, a cooperative grocery, a community college and a local bank. Its national appeal came partly from the impression that Pittsboro was willing to try an unconventional response to an economic crisis.
The modern town contains many of those same entrepreneurial instincts. The Plant describes itself as an eco-industrial village combining food, drink, art, music and locally owned businesses. Downtown Pittsboro promotes itself as an arts and cultural destination. New development is bringing additional residents, commercial activity and infrastructure demands.
A third version of PLENTY would test whether those separate parts of the community could be connected through a shared exchange network.
It would also test Estill’s theory that economic cooperation can soften cultural division.
A merchant does not need to agree with every customer’s politics to accept payment. A customer does not need to adopt an organizer’s worldview to support a local restaurant. The transaction itself can create a narrow area of cooperation — a recognition that both sides benefit when a useful product, service and payment change hands.
That may be PLENTY’s most durable idea.
From lunch-table proposal to public decision
For now, PLENTY’s third life exists primarily as a proposal made during a lively “3 Guys from Pittsboro” lunch.
Lyle has offered a location that could serve as an exchange. Eric, Greg and I expressed varying degrees of curiosity and support. The discussion identified the old system’s greatest strengths — local identity, publicity and intentional spending — while also exposing its greatest weaknesses.
The next step would be a public feasibility process rather than immediate printing.
Interested merchants, financial professionals, accountants, attorneys, technology specialists, downtown leaders and residents could examine the earlier programs and determine whether a new system should use paper notes, digital payments or a combination of the two.
They could establish measurable goals, including the number of participating businesses, the value in circulation, merchant-redemption rates and the amount of spending redirected toward locally owned companies.
Most importantly, they could decide whether Pittsboro still possesses the ingredient printed across the old notes: trust in one another.
“We’ll make a deal that we’ll explore this with you further,” Greg said as this part of our lunch conversation moved toward its conclusion.