Honesty boxes should be dying like cash. But many are flourishing

Honesty boxes: Traditionally found in rural accommodation, offering local produce such as eggs and apples in exchange for a small donation.

As the use of cash declines, they can be expected to disappear as a roadside relic as we all move towards the technology superhighway.

But in fact, many of them are improving.

Cash payments are being replaced by online transfers via QR codes, and small merchants are using honesty boxes as part of their marketing on social media.

This online marketing has a payoff. Some are finding that customers make a special trip to buy from them, rather than just attracting passing trade.

There’s a small but colorful honesty box on the side of the A road between Canterbury and the north Kent coast.

Inside the Blean Bakery Box are £3.50 worth of cookies in unusual flavors and dippable cookie tubs with toppings from cotton candy to brownie, all baked by Annabelle Cox.

The 36-year-old founded Dunk Cookies just before the pandemic. He set up his honesty box earlier this year and it has generated enough money to pay the rent on his bakery on a nearby industrial estate.

“The honesty box means we can be part of the community and offer something to them rather than the business just being online,” says the friendly Annabelle.

Various food festivals have gained him a following and some local traditions. He now opens the honesty box every day at 9 a.m. and locks it again at 8 p.m. The honesty box will remain, despite plans to downsize the bakery next year to spend more time with her young son.

It is on the school route, can be emptied in a few hours and is refilled regularly.

Annabelle films the restocks and shares them on Instagram. Its coverage brought customers from further afield. Annabelle also posts photos of herself collecting winnings to test customers’ honesty or dishonesty.

They pay almost without exception. One of the customers who arrived during the BBC’s visit filled the bag, scanned the QR code and promised to transfer the money when he received a signal. There was no doubt he would.

Annabelle says 90% of customers pay online after scanning the QR code inside the box. Many other honesty boxes in the UK use the same technology, with some even leaving a calculator inside for customers to work out the cost of their purchase.

Anyone confused can press the video doorbell to call the hotline to Annabelle’s bakery a few miles away.

This also helps with security, as does the placement of the box outside the window of local pub The Hare at Blean.

The pub’s chef and owner, Matthew Hayden, says he was happy to support another local business and lent the space for the box free of charge. Sometimes this brings a tradition for him too.

Having spent time in Byron Bay, Australia, where he saw honesty boxes at the end of people’s driveways, he says he liked the idea of ​​seeing something similar at home.

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

They both take cash; The honesty box has a mailbox for envelopes and change. But payments for food and drink at the bar are now made “almost exclusively” by phone, says Matthew.

Half of UK adults are now 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 oversees cash access and the UK’s ATM network, says it’s a rapid change that means many shoppers are now only going out with their phones and carrying less change.

Everyday payments such as charity donations, honesty boxes, craft stalls and rewarding buskers are increasingly being made digitally.

“There are positives in that merchants do not have to rely on customers having cash. They may also have the opportunity to sell products at higher prices,” he says.

But some charities worry the disappearance of cash will leave some people without any retail access.

Affordable food club charity The Bread-and-Butter Thing says many of its young members use notes and coins, as well as banking apps, to further stretch their limited budgets.

In addition to phones as a payment method, people are also discovering honesty boxes by browsing social media. Some small businesses, like Annabelle’s, have recognized this opportunity.

Bakeries in particular seem to have embraced the idea of ​​advertising through honesty boxes, the contents of which are filmed, illustrated and posted online. A quick search on social media quickly highlights bright young bakers with shiny boxes.

But the range of products in honesty boxes goes far beyond cookies and brownies. Oysters and dog treats are among the unusual ingredients sold at these stalls.

In Scotland, where honesty boxes were common, a golf course allowed people to pay for their rounds by dropping money into a collection box.

Yet the traditional honesty box persists in many areas. Many farms and small businesses sell eggs, seasonal vegetables and fruits in collection boxes for cash.

This is often the image that comes up when people talk about the honesty boxes they use.

These images were literally the source collection by photographer Kathryn MartinHaving spent several years mapping these interesting stalls during travels around Suffolk, Essex, Somerset and Sussex.

In her notes, she says she loves the honesty box “not just for the joys of growing up at home and the childlike excitement and memories of playing shop, but also for discovering the simple, the unpretentious, the local and the handmade in a world saturated with high technology, fake news and globalization.”

He also enjoys seeing the stalls and the ice cream boxes inside to collect customers’ money.

However, he says QR codes change the dynamics and sense of trust of the honesty box.

Maybe, like other technologies, it also brings about the loss of innocence.

“On the whole, most people are honest,” he writes about the traditional honesty box.

“Maybe it’s the uncertainty of being watched from behind that twitching curtain, maybe it’s the nostalgic feel-good factor that comes with playing shop, or maybe it’s the pristine natural beauty of the countryside that reminds us that honesty is, in fact, the best policy.”

Additional reporting by Connie Bowker