The results:

Bonn, Germany

The Bonn turnout was great- approximately 300 carrotmobbers spent 2,269 Euros in only 3 hours. Bioladen “Biokultur” in Kessenich promised to donate 20% of their revenue from the day to energy efficiency improvements, making for a total impact of 453 Euros! You can view pictures of the event on Flickr.

Durango, CO

The business mobbed in Durango was a small sub shop called Stonehouse Subs. Stonehouse promised to contribute 35% of their revenue to energy-efficiency changes (as determined by an outside consultant). The results were outstanding: $3500 in profits, nearly nine times a typical Saturday’s revenue for the business. ~350 (a fitting number) mobbers were in attendance. The event was sponsored by Annadel Business Solutions and Eco Consulting. Very impressive results for the smallest town to ever hold a Carrotmob! This should give confidence to any of you small towners who are thinking of planning an event. They also got coverage in two local news outlets: Durango Telegraph & Durango Herald

Minneapolis, MN

Minneapolis Carrotmobbers descended on Guse Hardware for a fun-filled day of entertainment and hardware shopping. Esther pulled together a live band, a DJ, and a raffle. Guse Hardware promised 100% of its gross revenue from the day to go towards energy efficiency changes!

San Francisco, CA

The SF carrotmob at Shotwells, a bar in the Mission, was a hopping (like rabbits, who like carrots) good time. In three hours (6pm-9pm) the bar already earned 63% of the total average earnings from an entire Saturday. The bar owners, Dave and Tom, were so excited about the event and about promoting positive change at their bar that they extended the mob until 2am, thus earning 140% in comparison to a regular Saturday night. The event was also filmed by a German tv crew filming a documentary.

San Luis Obispo, CA

SLO mobbers at Quick Stop Market spent $3.356.23 in three hours (seven times the normal revenue for that time!). There were 214 transactions made and 90 lbs of food collected for the local food bank. Quick Stop promised 40% of its revenue from the day to go toward energy efficiency upgrades, for a total of $1,342.49 to be reinvested into the store for eco-improvements. Energy Efficiency Solutions prepared and donated a professional energy audit report of the store, which will be revealed shortly What a fantastic turn-out!

Sydney, Australia

The 10/24 Sydney Carrotmob made history as the first ever Carrotmob held in the southern hemisphere! Way to go! Our good friends down under mobbed the Surry Hills MFC Supermarket. The market pledged 20% of its profits from the day to go toward energy efficiency improvements. About 150- 200 people came to the event, and this impressive group of mobbers spent a lot at the store! The market earned roughly ½ of what they earn in total for a busy Saturday day trading, all in the space of 3 hours. Considering that the store stays open until midnight, this was quite a feat! While Sydney organizers admitted it was a challenge putting on the first ever Carrtomob in Australia, they’re already getting psyched about planning their next Carrotmob. There was also a lot of great publicity surrounding the event! Check out Carrotmob Sydney in the news here: Mind Food, Pyrmont Village, & Frankie.

Victoria, BC, Canada

Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada planned a very successful Carrotmob at Discovery Coffee. Discovery pledged 100% of their revenue from their downtown location to go towards green improvements. On a normal day Discovery Coffee makes approximately $1250; on the Carrotmob day, Discovery Coffee took in $2100. And it gets better: Discovery was so pleased with the event that they added on revenues from their second location which effectively resulted in 200% revenues from the day (over $3000). That’s awesome. The super work of the Victoria organizers, the terrific response and turnout from the community (~200 people!), and the great commitment of Discovery Coffee has made the Victoria event a success, and, apparently, has inspired others in Victoria to start their own carrotmobs. The event was organized by SmallFeet Inc. Check out coverage of the Victoria event on the local news station: CHTV

Berlin, Germany

We’re pretty sure something cool happened in Berlin, but we don’t speak german. It’s possible that this explains what happened:

Ergebnis: Mit 2.334,34 EUR haben wir die bisherige Rekordmarke des Imbiss mehr als verdoppelt! + 45% davon für die Umwelt.

Anyway, we’d like to say a big thank you to all the Carrotmob organizers and mobbers who participated in the Carrotmob/350.org day! Thanks also to Amanda, Jon, and the rest of the 350 crew for pulling off an inspiring and impressive feat. You can see amazing pictures from other 350 events at 350.org! Now we’ve already got other events coming up in Isla Vista and Brussels, so stay tuned!

We are happy to announce that the next SF Carrotmob event is imminent!

>>> click here for more information <<<

The purpose of Carrotmob is to change the business world, but if, at the same time, we are able to help people work through their guilt issues with action, that’s probably a good thing too….

If our governments don’t hurry up and hit that 350 number then catastrophes will start happening left and right. Famine! Civil War! Economic collapse! Florida will disappear underwater except for a few dozen lucky survivors sitting on top of the Epcot Center, fishing for all the delicious sea creatures recently liberated from SeaWorld Orlando. Is this what will happen? We don’t know, but we do know that we want to help 350.org spread their message far and wide. Furthermore, we want to use this day to create a direct and measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. So if you want to help a business reduce their carbon footprint by having them compete in and win a Carrotmob, hit us up, or check out this map to find an event that’s already happening in your part of the world. If you’ve been waiting to organize a Carrotmob, October 24th is the day:

We’ve put up a new page about this partnership and we hope you’ll help us make some noise on October 24th!

A huge shout-out and thank you to our two other participants–Café Madeleine and Sausalito Espresso–for participating in the bidding. We hope this experience has helped them to understand the value consumers place on being environmentally conscious and sustainable. A million thanks to all of you as well for watching the videos, casting your votes, and taking part in this grand experiment.

Check back here, or better yet–subscribe to our feed for more details on the voting results and the upcoming Carrotmob event with Epicenter Café!

Instant-runoff voting uses ranked choice; voters rank contestants in their order of preference. Votes are tallied in a series of rounds.

In the first round, everyone’s first-choice votes are tallied. If a contestant has more than half of the total votes and more than anyone else, this contestant wins. Otherwise the contestant(s) with the smallest number of votes is/are eliminated.

In the second round, a voter’s second-choice vote is counted if that voter’s first-choice vote was for a contestant who has been eliminated. Again, a contestant with more than half the total votes wins; contestants with the fewest votes are eliminated.

In further rounds, each voter’s highest-ranked vote for a contestant still in the contest is counted. Elimination continues until a contestant has more than half the total votes or a tie prevents deciding a winner.

Got that? If not, you can watch this video to explain it, or read more on Wikipedia or Fairvote.org. The other thing to keep in mind is that when we display the results of the voting we are only showing you who would win if the voting were closed at any given moment…you don’t see how close it is, and it’s very easy for a store to make the jump from last place to first place if many people have chosen that store as their 2nd choice…

Happy voting!

1. What happens when you allow the public to vote for the winner of a Carrotmob?

Will they vote based on the maximum positive impact an event can have? Will they vote on personality? What if you let everyone in the world vote? If people vote who don’t live in the community and won’t be attending the event, will they change the results? Will people get really crazy and try to hack our voting system? Will people care? Will people understand the Instant-Runoff Voting system we’ve built? How many other organizers will want to use this public voting model for their next campaigns? (if you are an editor of a blog at http://yourcity.carrotmob.org we will soon make this app available to you!)

2. What happens when you use qualitative value judgments to decide who wins a Carrotmob event instead of simple quantitative measures?

If you use quantitative measures such as I did in the first ever event (ie: what percentage of revenue do you commit….) there’s no reason to have a vote. The winner is simply the business with the best bid. But a qualitative approach allows different businesses to make different types of offers, depending on what is most appropriate for them. It may be more difficult to determine which action will have the greatest impact, but this is also an acknowledgment that there are many approaches to making a business more socially responsible, and the debate about what’s most effective is a valuable debate to have. The qualitative approach makes it possible for a number of other secondary factors (ie: emotion, context, “lobbying”, popularity, preferred location, etc) to influence the result of the competition. Depending on your perspective this is either a downside or an upside. But it is nice that this will make the whole process of selecting a winner a more inclusive process.

3. Is a campaign necessarily weakened when the mob spends relatively smaller amounts of money?

In the first ever event, many people had good reason to spend a lot of money. After all, they had to stock up their liquor cabinets anyway, so why not spend $100? In this campaign, we are focusing on coffee shops. You can only reasonably spend like $5 in a coffee shop. We know some of you are crazy unreasonable, and capable of making it rain enough money in a coffee shop to fill your little red wagon with chocolate croissants, but honestly, even if more people come to this event than the last, if they only spend $5, that’s still much less spending than what was spent at a small grocery store. So will this event still be a success?

4. How does reputation compare to cash in terms of importance for a coffee shop?

Is it possible that even if a coffee shop doesn’t get huge revenues on one day, that a campaign will be extremely profitable for them in the long-term because of their improved reputation? This may be an interesting factor. You see, people came from all over the Bay Area to support K & D Market. But I don’t expect someone who lives in Oakland to go all the way to K & D every time they want to buy a handle of Jack. They call them “convenience stores” for a reason. K & D was in it for the one day payoff. But coffee shops in SOMA are nearby lots of offices filled with lots of people who drink coffee every day. Those people have multiple options for where they get their coffee. Does a Carrotmob have the power to change the preferred coffee shop of enough people in a neighborhood to give them a long-term advantage over all their less-responsible competitors? Will this result in mini-Carrotmobs by “the usuals” every day from now on? Or will people only show up on one day and then never again support? We will have to wait awhile and then ask the winning coffee shop what sort of sustained boost they have experienced.

5. How does a campaign on a weekday with no afterparty compare to a campaign on a Sunday followed by a free concert in Dolores Park?

We know Carrotmob can work as a party destination for your day, but what does it look like when people just want to swing by for 5 minutes on their way to work? Will the mob want to stick around and hang out, or just efficiently spend their money for the cause and go? Can we keep the line short and efficient this time?

6. Will people vote for those businesses who have not made change, or those who have already made change?

This is quite possibly the most important question that we will answer with this event. Every campaign is different, but we’re definitely at a bit of a fork in the road here. This vote is going to be a referendum on the question of what Carrotmob’s primary purpose should be: Should we focus on creating the most change directly, or on rewarding the most responsible businesses whether or not we are causing change? We don’t want to interfere with your own decision-making, so you may wish to watch the videos for yourself before reading the next sentence. Most observers who have previewed the videos feel that Epicenter Cafe is the most environmentally-friendly coffee shop in the competition, but they also feel like Carrotmob could have a stronger impact by rewarding one of the other two cafes. What to do? There is no right answer to this question yet, people. This week we need to come up with our first answer.

So it’s time for a few shout outs. First off, Kirstin Henninger and the Green Cafe Network helped us out by consulting with the cafes about what changes they could make. Our expertise is in coordinating the mob, so it’s great to work with experts and non-profit partners who are able to achieve their goals by partnering to plan a Carrotmob! We hope that the winning cafe will choose to join the GCN as well. A lot of people have contributed to getting this event off the ground, including Curtis, Natasha, Brad, Jacob, Susanna… oh and a huge shout out to Aaron and Grant for coding up a voting app that is beautiful on the outside and has a beautiful algorithm on the inside as well. And thanks in advance to you, mob, for making this possible.

The time has now come for you to head on over to our Carrotmob voting page and make your choice! Be sure to subscribe to the blog or follow us on Twitter for updates on this campaign….