New Delhi: In an era where trust doesn’t come easy to most of us, a shop in Bangalore is setting a different example. The Trust Shop, which has an outlet in Bharat Golf View Apartments at the Old Airport Road, runs solely on the trust it poses on its customers.
At this shop, there is no salesman or camera looking at the ones entering its precincts. All one has to do is pick up the things they need from the fridge placed and pay whatever they feel like in a small box attached to the door. If a customer doesn’t wish to pay right away, they can pay later as and when it suits them.
As unbelievable as it sounds, this shop exists for real. And no, it doesn’t have any shortage of options.
The Trust Shop, is founded by PC Mustafa, founder of iD Foods. The products in the fridge have popular breakfast and lunch options from South India - Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. No less than a Santa Claus’s bagful for customers, one can find sachets of idli/dosa batter, wheat chapatis and Malabar parottas.
Mustafa, has set 17 such outlets of the Trust Shop across Bangalore, 12 residential locations and five KPMG branch offices. He feels the idea is to trust customers completely and give them access to fresh food 24*7. The positive feedback of customers drives him.
Doesn’t it worry Mustafa is someone doesn’t pay for his products? No, he says. “Most consumers pay for what they pick up. In some apartments, collection is as high as 90% and on some days, it is over 100%. Some associations have taken it up as a challenge to ensure 100% payment. It is such a positive feeling within the apartment community and in the iD team,” a leading daily quoted Mustafa.
This is not the first such shop to make it to the news. In London, David Waterhouse set up The Honesty Shop near the Tower of London. The Honesty shop wasn’t a shop precisely, but a bus in which most products were sold for less than 20 pounds. Waterhouse, was labelled crazy by many when he opened the shop, but he claimed that his shop has attracted many people, most of them aren’t shoplifters.
Closer home, in Mizoram a hut called Nghah lou dawr’ (meaning, shop without attendants) exists. According to media reports, people can get what they want from it and pay the money in the container kept.
These examples just restored faith in humanity.
