Honest City attempted to give Tempe a lesson in the honor system on Monday.
Honest Tea, a producer of natural and organic teas throughout the U.S., is spearheading the social experiment Honest City.
Racks of Honest Tea bottles worth $1 apiece were placed at unmanned pop-up stores set up around various metropolitan cities around the country, Regional Marketing Manager Ryan Vandegriendt said.
“Passersby have the opportunity to purchase or to steal a bottle,” he said. “We do it through a six hour period and at the end of the day we figure out how many bottles were taken, how many purchased and then we rate the city based on that.”
The now two-year long experiment set up shop outside of Sal’s Pizza on East Apache Boulevard.
“The majority of the states and cities have all been around 85 to 95 percent honest,” Vandegriendt said. “It’s really exciting to come out here and see how Arizona holds up.”
After six hours of operation, the results revealed that Tempe had a shockingly low honesty rating of 71 percent.
“The numbers seem kind of skewed because of the low amount of foot traffic during the day,” said Joe Stemmer, a San Diego marketing representative.
Honest City popped up in 12 major cities in the nation on July 19, including Los Angeles, New York City, Miami and Boston. The most honest city was Chicago with a 99 percent honesty rating, according to their website.
Los Angeles and New York City had the two lowest ratings with 88 percent in L.A. and 86 percent in New York City.
Stemmer said the experiment is getting significant recognition.
“If anything it’s just something fun and everyone likes thinking how honest their city is, so when we tell them, ‘Hey you guys are 95 percent honest’ most people feel really good about that,” Stemmer said.
In addition to Honest City Tempe, a store will be set up Wednesday outside of the ASU Bookstore for students to participate honesty or dishonesty.
“We are expecting much different results on Wednesday on campus at ASU,” Stemmer said. “With more foot traffic it should make the experiment more successful.”
All proceeds the experiment receives are given to a local charity of the city Honest Tea inhabits. Honest City has raised more than $15,000 so far for charities such as Share our Strength and Rails to Trails Conservancy.
The proceeds for Honest City Tempe and ASU will go to City Year, a nonprofit organization that helps students with schoolwork and stay on track for graduation.
“With Honest Tea, we’re very concerned about social initiatives,” Honest Tea L.A. marketing representative Josh Cunningham said. “We want to be involved with (the) community as much as we can.”
Reach the reporter at sraymund@asu.edu
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