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WHILE BIG RETAILERS hire security guards and fit security tags to every shoelace, one café has done away with the register altogether.
But rather than having trouble with customers skipping out on their bills, the only problem The Hazel House staff have to deal with under its honest-box system is locals overpaying and refusing to help themselves to change.
The honesty-box system is the brain-child of owner and carpenter Niall Fitzharris, who wanted to come up with a way to run the self-service café without leaving his woodworking studio.
The business, in an old farmhouse at Rathfarnam in the Dublin hills, also sells Irish crafts from ceramics to jewellery and runs woodworking classes.
Hazel House’s Fionnuala Malone, who now looks after its crafts and regular events, said she initially questioned if the plan was too risky, but the honesty system had worked perfectly from the start.
“I think that people like that they feel trusted,” she said.
So often now, people don’t feel like that – they go into a shop and there is a security guard there and they feel watched. What we’re doing goes against all that.”
Earlier this year, The Vault coffee shop in the small North Dakota town of Valley City drew international attention for its staff-free honour system.
Its owners, David and Kimberly Brekke, said the idea of honesty might come as a shock to people who hadn’t grown up in a tight-knit community, but to them it made perfect sense.
Malone said The Hazel House was an active part of the Rathfarnam social fabric, hosting regular movie nights and events, and everyone liked the honesty-box set up.
“It has been working really well from the beginning; we have never had a problem so far – everyone’s been honest,” she said.
“When people come in they laugh and they’re a bit surprised that we are doing it that way, but everyone likes the system.”
READ: This café’s strict ‘no hipsters’ policy takes an unexpected turn
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The word in the local neighbourhood is it’s the “Cream Crackers” that’s doing the damage, was the same again a few weeks ago. Sure why not?, this culture is vital to the Irish public and must be protected at all cost.
@Alberto Balsam: they cudabean elocucted at that boss. Them lines wooden b copper, more like a galvanised steal!
@Alberto Balsam: Taking the biscuit again. Ballybrack Says No (to work and mortgages) likely culprits. Rob everything.
@Alberto Balsam: Of course that’s the word locally. Never seen an area yet that will blame their own. It’s always someone else.
@Sherry Adams – Norn Iron Drag Artiste: Not me,I work,I have a mortgage,looks like you fell flat on your face with that one,yet again.
@P. V. Aglue: pity they weren’t
@Sherry Adams – Norn Iron Drag Artiste: I live in Ballybrack, had a mortgage, paid it in full 20 years ago when I was 33, don’t tar the majority with the few.
@Andrew Giles: in fairness.
With the lot in the government we are heading steadily backward.
@Lei tatt: were we ever moving forward under the governments we have had over the decades..
@Lei tatt: that’s individual behaviour
@Lei tatt: which government TD chucked the shipping trolley on to the wires.
@paulie: shopping.
@paulie: at this stage I’d say they’re all suspects.
@Sherry Adams – Norn Iron Drag Artiste: he’s miss have you seen his peepers.
What time is yer man from the airport meltdown due in court? Can’t wait to hear the excuse….
@Sherry Adams – Norn Iron Drag Artiste: Lukas Kaunietis of no fixed abode. Would that be Lithuanian then?
I wonder was it vandalism or was it crime, i.e. theft of the cables. Not that vandalism isn’t a crime.
@Rob Goodbody: shopping trolley rob.
@Rob Goodbody: was a problem in the UK for years. Remote stretches of motorway between junctions, where cables for street lights were regularly liberated
@Ronan Mc: Roma and travellers job usually. Some got killed in France while stealing cables on a TGV line… low IQ people.
and Irish Rail can’t deliver the rail line from Athenry in Galway to Collooney in Sligo to civilised people in the Western seaboard.
More CCTV’s required and more security.
Oh. Not Pantograph Bliss then. Shocking.
@Sherry Adams – Norn Iron Drag Artiste: Does the Journal pay your mortgage?
@Pól Pot: if it’s from ballybrack it doesn’t have a mortgage apparently.
have your say