Honesty boxes must be dying like money. But many are thriving

Honesty Boxes: Traditionally found at home lay-bys, offering local produce like eggs and apples in exchange for a small donation.

As money slows down, they may be expected to disappear – a roll in the road as we all pull up the Technology Superhighway.

But, in fact, many are thriving.

Cash payments are being replaced by online Transfers via QR Code, and small businesses are using months of loyalty as part of their social media marketing.

That online marketing pays off. Others have found that instead of just attracting passing trade, customers are making a special journey to buy from them.

On the side of an A-Road between Canterbury and the North Kent Coast is a small but colorful Honesty Box.

Packed inside the Blean Bakery Box are cookies for £3.50 in a range of delicious flavours, and tubes of dunking cookies with brownie – all baked by annabelle cox.

The 36-year-old founded dunk cookies before the pandemic. He installed the honesty box earlier this year and it brought in enough money to pay his baker’s rent in a nearby industry.

“Truth of Authenticity means that we can be part of my community – bringing something to them, instead of just being an online business,” says the reason annabelle.

The different food flovals give him a following and some local customs. Now, he opens the honesty box every day at 9am until it is locked at 8pm. Despite plans to return to the bakery next year, spending more time with his son, the Truth of Honesty will remain.

It’s on a school run route, can be empty within hours, and is always refilled.

Annabelle Films restocked and posted it on Instagram. Coverage brings customers from more ways. Annabelle also posts photos of herself adding Takings, to test the honesty or dishonesty of customers.

Almost without exception, they pay. A customer who came to visit the BBC filled a bag, scanned the QR code, and promised to transfer the money once he had a signal. There was no doubt that he wanted to.

Annabelle says 90% of customers pay online after scanning the QR code inside the box. Many other loyalty boxes around the UK use the same technology, some leaving a calculator inside for customers to value their withdrawals.

Anyone confused can press the video doorbell, for an annabelle baker’s hotline several miles away.

It also helps with security, as is the reason the box is placed outside the window of the local Pub – the Blean hare.

Mateo Hayden, the chef-owner of the pub, says he is happy to support another local business, and lends the space for the box free of charge. Sometimes, it also brings the routine for him.

After spending time in Byron Bay in Australia, where he saw bone boxes at the end of people’s driveways, he said he wanted to see something similar at home.

In the box outside the window, and inside the bar, most customers mostly, and increasingly, use their smartphones.

Both take cash – the honesty box contains envelopes and a change letter. But Mateo said paying for food and drink at the pub is now “almost all” over the phone.

Half of UK adults today pay for things by tapping their phoneaccording to the latest data from banking trade body, UK Finance.

Graham Mott, Director of Strategy at Link – which is the age of cash access and the ATM Network in the UK – says that a strong shopping, with many stores that are not very close together.

Casual payments, such as charity donations, honesty boxes, blacksmiths’ carpentry and rewarding busers, are increasingly becoming digital.

“There are positives, as merchants do not have to rely on customers with change. They can also have the opportunity to raise goods at a higher price,” he said.

But some staff worry that the disappearance of money will shut some people out of all kinds of retail.

The cheap bread-and-butter food club says most of its small members use letters and coins, along with more limited budgets.

As well as phones as a method of payment, people discovered bone boxes by scrolling through social media. Some small businesses, like Annabelle saw the opportunity.

Bakers, in particular, seem to be getting the idea of ​​advertising through honesty boxes – content that is printed, illustrated and posted online. A quick search on social media quickly highlights bright bakers with bright stones.

But the various harvests of KONSEPY BIARDES Far from cookies and cakes. Oysters and dog treats are among the more unusual items sold at these stalls.

In Scotland, where honesty boxes are commonly found, a golf course allows people to pay for their round by dropping money into a collection box.

However, the traditional Truth of Truth Lives in many places. Many farms and farms sell eggs, seasonal vegetables and fruits for money in collection boxes.

For many, that’s still the image that comes to mind when people talk about the beitory boxes they use.

These images are literally sourced from A Collection by Photographer Kathryn Martinwho spent a couple of years charting quirky stalls on tours around Suffolk, Essex, Somerset and Sussex.

In his notes, he said that he loves a Death Box “Not only for the pleasure of the house and the discovery of simple Tech, fake news and globalization”.

He was also happy to see the stalls themselves, and the ice cream tubes inside them to collect money from the customers.

But he says that the Pices change the dynamics of a box of honesty, and the feeling of trust.

Perhaps, like any other technology, it brings with it a loss of innocence.

“In general, most people are honest,” he writes of the traditional Honesty Box.

“Maybe it’s the uncertainty of looking from behind that twitching curtain or maybe it’s the nostalgic feeling of not being good because of their mountain places that remind us that the best policy.”

Additional Reporting By Connie Bower